Airport tax to stop LCY service ?

A report in today's Irish Times suggests that the decision by the Government to impose a travel tax in this month's budget could prevent CityJet from launching a Shannon - London City service. It appears from the report that CityJet have been looking at the possibility of launching a London City service from the mid west airport for some time but the lack of aircraft capacity has prevented the service from taking wings. The decision by the UK's OFT which clears CityJet's takeover of Dutch airline VLM would have created the required capacity but a rethink is now on the cards as a result of the budgetary tax. In response to the suggestion that passengers on an LCY route would be mostly business passengers who wouldn't notice the tax, CityJet CEO Geoffrey O'Byrne-White responded that the tax alters the economics of the route compared to other routes they might serve.