Knock airport defends new ‘brand identity’

Ciara Galvin

IRELAND West Airport Knock has not changed its name by removing the iconic ‘Knock’ from its title. That is according to Head of Marketing at the airport, Donal Healy.
Mr Healy was responding to public concerns over the weekend, after a revamp of the airport’s website, where the airport’s logo was noticeably changed to Ireland West Airport.
Members of the public voiced concerns, including one person saying the late Monsignor Horan would ‘turn in his grave if he knew his beloved Knock was removed’.
Healy said the ‘new logo’ was part of a €15 million facilities investment plan, aimed at transforming the airport over the next three years.
“It’s modernising the brand identity. It [the airport] is still called Ireland West Airport Knock on the building. For branding purposes we just freshened it up. The brand identity is 12 years old,” Mr Healy told The Mayo News.
He said these programmes of work were enabled by the investment of local authority partners, Mayo County Council and six other authorities, among other investors.
Asked if the buy in from local authorities outside Mayo had any bearing on the new brand identity, Mr Healy assured that it had not, and that it is merely a new version of the airport’s logo.
“We’ll be using a variation of both [Ireland West Airport Knock and Ireland West Airport]. There is no controversy in terms of the name. The type of branding will depend on the type of application. We did it with the previous name, but we’ll always be ‘Knock Airport’ to most people,” said Mr Healy.
The latest phase of investment will see new passenger facilities, terminal upgrades and infrastructural works across the airport facility and runway, including covered aircraft passenger boarding stairs for passengers boarding and disembarking aircraft, re-modelling of immigration and arrivals area creating increased circulation space for arriving passengers and a full resurfacing of the airport’s 2,400metre runway including taxiways and an upgrade of lighting system to LED.