It appears we might be getting closer to finding out how deeply the public will be skinned for the “privilege” of the Irish airline Aer Lingus establishing direct flights between Dublin and Pittsburgh.
It was last Monday that the Internet publication “Travel and Tour World” picked up the reporting anew that Aer Lingus’ planning for a major expansion of service to the United States includes Pittsburgh International Airport, among others.
It was a year-and-a-half ago, in July 2023, that we cited the first Irish media accounts of such possible flights. In short order, the Allegheny County Airport Authority confirmed to the Post-Gazette that it was in negotiations with Aer Lingus.
And with Cleveland at that time having just recently agreed to a $12 million incentive over three years to add Aer Lingus flights, we raised some alarm bells.
Those bells clanged anew this month when the Pittsburgh Steelers announced a four-year partnership with Aer Lingus to become the “official airline” of the Steelers. That, in advance of this fall’s first-ever regular-season NFL game in Dublin.
As an Aer Lingus news release noted:
“Not only will the proposed partnership establish us as an official airline partner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, it will also establish us as a founding partner of Steelers Ireland and the official airline partner of Steelers Ireland.”
That said, the Pittsburgh Business Times was quick to point out that while the Steelers’ partnership with Aer Lingus “will raise the team’s profile in Ireland before and after this fall’s game in Dublin … it doesn’t mean the airline has immediate plans to serve Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT).”
But it’s difficult to imagine that it and the Steelers would ink such a deal – whose value has not been made public – without more concrete plans to be able to serve your new business partner’s home airport.
Rich Fitzgerald, the former Allegheny County chief executive who now serves as the head of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, offered a cryptic “Stay tuned” on KDKA Radio last week.
Of course, there’s plenty of time to reach an agreement with PIT, given this fall’s Dublin game, presumably against the Green Bay Packers, is more than six months off.
But how awkward it will be, sans a special charter status, if the “official airline” of the Pittsburgh Steelers has to fly out of (GASP!) Cleveland!
That, by the way, is a sardonic observation from an old ink-stained wretch who fervently believes that public dollars controlled by a public authority have no business being used to bribe airlines to use your landing strip.
And if the Steelers are to be the primary beneficiary of such flights, as the case appears to be, shouldn’t it be the Steelers, made even richer by what we’re sure is a very handsome marketing deal, who make up any Aer Lingus shortfalls not covered by paying customers?
Damn straight.
There is, however, a major hurdle for Aer Lingus to clear without public subsidies even considered. As Aer Lingus wrote in its long news release announcing its intentions for a massive expansion of international service out of Dublin, it noted how Dublin International Airport’s passenger cap “remains a persistent problem.”
“The current limit of 32 million passengers per year is slowing down Dublin’s growth prospects, with the introduction of new long-haul routes uncertain. Fingal County Council has received a request to increase the cap to 36 million but a previous application was rejected due to regulatory non-compliance,” Aer Lingus says (and whatever that means).
And more than a few observers say they’re not encouraged that the cap will be lifted any time soon.
Back to the topic of subsidies.
Aer Lingus has managed to extract multimillion-dollars in subsidies and incentives from just about every U.S. airport it serves. The depths of the corporate wealthfare is stunning and nauseating.
In a 2023 story in Ireland’s The Independent, Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis said her team has “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.”
So, why are subsidies — either outright grants or incentives that, in reality, backstop, if not incentivize, nonperformance – even on the table?
As Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute, noted just last week (in Policy Brief Vol. 25, No. 7):
“(S)ubsidies beget subsidies … they create unfair competition for other carriers … they do not produce the economic benefits they are touted to do,” the Ph.D. economist reminds. “Reliance on subsidies to generate passenger growth signals a recognition of a lack of economic and population gains.”
And such “pump-priming” with public dollars has the rottenest record of historic failure ‘round these parts, if not everywhere.
And then there’s this:
Massive, multimillion-dollar subsidies to Aer Lingus to cement a PIT landing deal could prove to be the equally massive market-perverting cluster-cluck of all cluster-clucks, considering Aer Lingus and the already subsidized British Airways (BA) at PIT share the same parent company, the Spanish-registered International Airlines Group (IAG).
If the Aer Lingus deal is richer than the BA deal, you can bet the latter, another money-gobbling scion of the same mother, will demand that it be bribed in equal or higher measure.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
