February 17, 2010 - Ireland’s Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary released photographs of what Hangar 6 is being used for today “precisely nothing”. These photographs were taken at approx 9 AM on Tuesday which shows no activity going on, no “heavy maintenance work going on in the hangar”, at a time of year when it should be full of aircraft undergoing heavy maintenance. This is why 800 SRT engineers are on the dole today.

Last year over 800 employees lost their jobs when SR Technics closed its facility at Dublin Airport. O'Leary disputes he could restore 300 of those jobs if he could rent or buy the hangar space at Dublin Airport a reasonable price.

“At a time when 800 former SR Technics engineers are on the dole, it is remarkable that this Minister for Enterprise has failed to do the one simple thing which is required to win a multi-million euro investment from Ryanair and which would create up to 300 jobs in the large Hangar 6 facility at Dublin Airport. Ryanair is now the world’s largest international airline, with a fleet of 210 aircraft and is one of the few airlines capable of filling this large Hangar 6 facility. We can create and sustain hundreds of well paid engineering jobs”.

Ryanair on Tuesday made the point to state that Aer Lingus has a long-term heavy maintenance contract for their entire fleet of 35 aircraft in France and therefore has no requirement for the Hangar 6 facility. Ryanair believes that the DAA lease to Aer Lingus was designed solely to block Ryanair's request for this facility which was submitted to the Tánaiste last September at a time when Ryanair was offering to create 500 maintenance jobs at Dublin Airport.

Ryanair also released an extract from its DAA lease agreement for Hangar 1, which contains a standard clause in all DAA lease agreements allowing the DAA to terminate leases and relocate licensees (such as Aer Lingus in Hangar 6) should the DAA require the facility.

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara stated “We are releasing these photographs and this extract from a DAA license agreement to demonstrate two things;  

1. That Hangar 6 is unused and Aer Lingus' line engineers have no use for this large heavy maintenance building and, 

2. To prove that the DAA has lied again when they claimed that Aer Lingus has a 20 year lease over Hangar 6 and cannot be moved. 

“These photographs and this information prove yet again that the DAA has lied to the Govt and the public and has, we believe, misled the Tánaiste last September and again recently when they claimed that they had other parties interested in using the Hangar 6 facility for heavy maintenance. These false claims show why Ryanair cannot and will not deal with the DAA.”