Ireland & India

Ireland has been a pioneer of sorts in aviation and aircraft leasing industry due to the full support from its government. With expertise in all aviation related activities, Ireland is offering business opportunities to India. In an exclusive interview with SP’s Aviation  Editor-in-Chief Jayant Baranwal, the Ireland Minister of State for Employment and Small Business, Pat Breen, states that Ireland and India have so much to share. Patrick Edmond, Group Strategy Director, Shannon Group Plc and Managing Director, International Aviation Services Centre, also participated in this discussion.

- Jayant Baranwal

Jayant Baranwal (JB): Could you tell us how Ireland has reached the peak in aviation and in how much time?

Pat Breen (Breen): Ireland being an island nation, there are only two ways to get out, either by air or by sea. Our geographic location is such, the most westerly countries in Europe, airlines en route to Europe have to stop by. Airlines in the early days stopped off in Ireland en route to Europe. Of course, the early pioneers also stopped in Ireland, as in the first Trans Atlantic flight crossed to Europe. Our history of being pioneer in aviation is something special to us. Our airports started gathering momentum in Dublin, Shannon, Cork airports. So I suppose this has come from a number of entrepreneurs and pioneers in aviation and I go back to somebody like Dr Tony Ryan who started off Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA). And then there is the growth of Aer Lingus, our national carrier. So we had a lot of expertise and entrepreneurs working with GPA. At one time in the 1980s, GPA was the largest leasing company of aircraft in the world.

Back in the 1970s, flying and aviation was quite expensive and Dr Ryan had the vision to start this company and he was joined by a number of very dynamic and young people who wanted to excel themselves in the aviation sector, people like Michael O’Leary who founded Ryan air. Out of Guinness Peat Aviation came Ryan Air which was called after Dr Tony Ryan. Of course, Ryan Air started as a very low-cost airline, based on the South-Eastern model in the US. Low-cost was very new at that time, a lot of the traditional airlines had their cartel charging whatever they liked. In those years, to cross to the UK it used to cost 400 pounds, today you can get it for as little as 20 pounds each way that is what has happened with competition.