Here we go again:
The Allegheny County Airport Authority reportedly is prepared to offer millions of dollars to entice Irish airline Aer Lingus to establish direct flights between Pittsburgh and Dublin.
How many millions is not detailed. But if past is prologue, it will be in the multiple millions. While it’s unknown how the subsidy will be structured, Cleveland offers some possible, in part, outrageous, clues. More on that later.
If the Airport Authority and Aer Lingus do cut a deal, The Irish Independent newspaper speculates the airline will use new Airbus A321XLR jets. Airbus says those aircraft seat anywhere from 180 to 220 passengers and burn 30 percent less fuel.
“Those jets will allow Aer Lingus to serve more destinations in the U.S. where there’s not sufficient demand to economically operate larger long-haul aircraft in its fleet,” The Irish Independent newspaper reported.
But it still will expect public subsidies?
In a story first reported by The Independent, Airport Authority CEO Christa Cassotis said her team met with Aer Lingus executives over several days recently “as part of a wider mission by the airport and [city and county officials] to promote economic and cultural links between the two cities.”
“What we have told Aer Lingus as well as every other airline that we’ve spoken to, is that we expect that once a non-stop service is put in … you’ll see that that local market will more than double within one to two years,” she said.
Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald told Irish media that there are “a lot of connections between what’s going on in Ireland, particularly in Dublin, and Pittsburgh, around robotics, artificial intelligence, sciences – there’s just a real synergy.”
“Having a flight to allow that direct connection… would help us, and Dublin, economically,” he further said.
But if there’s supposedly so much demand for a nonstop Pittsburgh-Dublin flight, why should it be subsidized with anything but passenger-paid tickets?
Last October, Reid Moody, chief strategy and planning officer at Aer Lingus, told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland that it’s “expensive to start in a new city. The [public] investment really does de-risk the first 18 months especially.”
But since when should it be the taxpayers’ job to “de-risk” any private business expansion? Never mind how long that has been the modus operandi for most government “economic development,” the proper answer to that question is “since never.”
Moody’s comments came with the announcement that Cleveland was putting up nearly $12 million in “incentives” over three years to bribe – yes, let’s call it what it is — Aer Lingus to fly out of Hopkins International Airport.
Again, from The Plain Dealer:
“Local partners – including the city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and the Greater Cleveland Partnership – are contributing up to $2.4 million over those three years, with an additional $9.4 million coming from JOBSOhio, the private economic development arm of state government, according to a city document.”
(JOBSOhio acquired an exclusive 25-year franchise from the state of Ohio for the sale of “spirituous liquor” in 2013. It funds “economic development” projects using proceeds from liquor sales).
But Aer Lingus’ Moody also said he believes the new Cleveland-Dublin route would be successful independent of the taxpayers’ and JOBSOhio’s financial commitment. “We target cities that we want to be in for the long haul,” he said.
And cities or regions that can be played for suckers and allow giant corporations to offload a large part of their startup risk onto the public.
The Plain Dealer says the Cleveland “incentive for Aer Lingus is not a grant or direct subsidy; rather, it’s a minimum revenue guarantee, payable only if the flight doesn’t meet certain monthly performance goals.”
Well, isn’t that another special little tidbit – if there’s no demand for these flights, and Aer Lingus comes up short on passengers, the public pays.
You’ll recall that the Allegheny County Airport Authority has a checkered history of bribing airlines to fly into Pittsburgh International Airport.
Some airlines pushed back permanently from the Great Gate of Public Suckers as soon as the subsidies ran out. Another went belly up even with the subsidy (and in a particularly tawdry tale, at least one Airport Authority board member had invested in the airline).
British Airways, which operates under the same parent company as Aer Lingus, IAG Group, returned to PIT but only after a multimillion-dollar taxpayer subsidy was delivered on a silver platter. And it expanded service after, you guessed it, receiving even more public money.
And, lest we forget, it’s generally believed that Delta Air Lines dropped its Pittsburgh-Paris direct flight because of that British Airways corporate wealthfare.
By the way, how are those British Airways flights doing? We keep hearing all manner of happy talk about them. But the Airport Authority has not backed it up with any kind of hard numbers, at least not that we’ve seen.
Now comes Aer Lingus, bellying up to the public trough to which, in all likelihood, it was given an engraved invitation.
At least one Allegheny County pol is all giddy-yeehaw over the prospect of direct Pittsburgh-Dublin flights. He likens it to – as FDR did with the New Deal – “priming the pump” of regional economic development.
But as with the New Deal, so has gone such “pump-priming” in Allegheny County. Once the public-money primer runs out, the pump seizes. Which creates the vicious cycle of rationalizing evermore government intervention with your tax dollars to cover up the lie of the last, and predictably failed, intervention.
We anxiously await formal word of what the Aer Lingus deal entails. And we use the word “anxious” properly. For it will be the latest great announcement to end all great announcements based on largely false information of great benefits to come – benefits that, predictably, will fail to materialize, mock the marketplace and yet again leave taxpayers skinned.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
