Transatlantic flights

Flyglobespan ‘determined to restore full confidence’ in Knock-NY service

Olof Gill

THE future of Flyglobespan’s transatlantic service from Ireland West Airport Knock (IWAK) appears safe, following announcements from the airport and the company last week. In a statement issued last week, Flyglobespan chairman Tom Dalrymple underlined his airline’s determination to restore full confidence in their Ireland West Airport Knock service to New York’s JFK. 
“We have taken a bit of pounding,” Mr Dalrymple admitted, “some of it justified, some of it totally undeserved. But we are conducting a full internal enquiry into all aspects of our performance – with a view to ensuring that our Ireland West Knock-JFK service performs to the high standard we expect from all our routes.”
Mr Dalrymple acknowledged that the airline was at fault in the unfortunate situation experienced by many passengers who were grounded for days in New York two weeks ago and said steps are being taken to guard against a repeat.
“We are deeply concerned with the comments of passengers waiting in New York and I am determined those received will be responded to and necessary actions taken to making sure that we learn from this.
“I can well imagine the frustration that the passengers must have felt at that time, and I apologise profusely for their discomfort but I hope they understand that the airline had followed the advice given and, as always, was putting safety first.” 
Mr Dalrymple also dismissed the claim by some passengers that the airline had shamefully used the Glasgow terrorist attacks as an excuse for their mistakes. “I know the JFK problems had started before the terrorist attack – but the Glasgow Airport closure made an already difficult situation virtually impossible to resolve by way of another aircraft.
“It put a huge strain on our fleet, our flight deck and cabin crew personnel and our customer handling staff in Scotland – which may explain the number of complaints we received regarding passengers unable to get through on our help lines. We did, however, attempt to keep everyone appraised of the situation via our web site and our efforts were well received by our passengers,” he said.
While acknowledging that ‘we let our customers down in JFK’, Mr Dalrymple took issue with some media coverage of the episode.
“Among the media coverage over this there have been some comments that would seem to question Flyglobespan’s safety policy.  Let me stress that this airline always puts safety first. We pay 100 per cent attention to safety and any suggestion to the contrary will be scrutinised by our legal team.”
Meanwhile, IWAK officials welcomed Mr Dalrymple’s statement. They were pleased that the airline ‘publicly acknowledged and apologised for the extraordinary [recent] delays’.
Airport officials went on to say that Flyglobspan’s statement will ‘clarify the airline’s position on resolving the outstanding issues for passengers that were inconvenienced by these events’, and that ‘it demonstrates the airline’s commitment to improve the transatlantic services from Ireland West Airport Knock’.  Finally, the airport wished to assure passengers that, ‘within its own capacity, [we] will strive to deliver a high quality transatlantic service from Ireland West Airport Knock’.
At time of writing, discussions were still being held between the airport and Flyglobespan with regard to maintaining a transatlantic Knock route for the winter months. Airport and Flyglobespan officials indicated that there is strong interest in such a route among west of Ireland passengers, particularly for the holiday period. However, the airline’s Liverpool-JFK route will not be operating during the winter months, and in order to maintain a Knock service, a new British airport would have to be found as a transatlantic hub. Airline officials did confirm, however, that the Liverpool-Knock-JFK route will be up and running next summer regardless of the outcome of winter schedule discussions.