In the Autumn of 2004 Cork were in serious negotiations with Ryanair but decided not to give them the terms that they subsequently got from Shannon.
Whether SNN will be able to sustain these extremely genourous terms after the bilateral is changed and the US troop flights dry up is very doubtful. Their costs are huge and the Unions are unwilling to budge.
This has caused the DAA (the real owners of Cork and Shannon) to withdraw the extremely attractive redundancy offer)
Cork seem to be more comfortable dealing with Aerlingus so it looks as if Ryanair will continue to base just one plane there although rumours of a 2nd aircraft continue to surface from time to time. Cork Prestwick or Cork Glasgow with Aerlingus could be on the cards.
but is there really enough demand from Shannon to fill that many seats on DIY ski trips?
My sentiments exactly! Indeed, skiing holidays have been growing a lot in popularity the last 10 years in Ireland, but still it's not yet a national tradition to go off for a ski week. And not having been skiing so often before, Irish people will tend to book via a travel agent for the all inclusive package. The ski resorts near Biarritz won't even have been frequented by too many Shannoners before, so there will definitely be a hestitation to organise a DIY ski trip to an unknown resort.
Anyway, who's going to fly to Biarritz and Carcassonne in November?? I actually lived in Biarritz for a summer before and I know a Biarritzian living in Cork right now. It is a great place to visit/live! Really beautiful. Coastline, cliffs, beaches, sunsets, mountains, ski, Spain down the road, Lourdes nearby etc. etc. But I just can't imagine the Shannon to Biarritz service doing particularly well during the winter, except for the occasional rugby match.
I hope the novelty of the new destinations will spur people to use these services to Biarritz, Carcassonne and Shannon, and allow them to discover the charms of these destinations, so that they can return to their homeland, spread the word, and that these routes will be a success.
Sustainability could be a problem on the SNN-BIQ. I have travelled DUB-BIQ twice now in the month of September, onece last year and once this year. Last year it was a 732 service and it was hard enough to fill that, this year with the 738 it was a group of 20 of us plus the same amount of annoying Spanish teenagers (separate groups!) and still there was plenty of seats left. Taking into account the presence of two large-ish groups, individuals/families were few and far between. Perhaps we can count on the new surfing culture thats becoming increasingly popular in Ireland particularly out west. Biarritz/Bayonne/Anglet is a lovely region and it is only 2hrs to Lourdes on the train (done it) and its pretty convenient. And what about frenchies coming over here?
BTW on the subject of Lourdes, DUB/SNN-Pau 3x weekly during the summer would surely be a winner, no? Much closer than Biarritz and is closer to Pyrenees resorts for skiing not to mention the area being popular with walkers too.
Our new bases at Liverpool, East Midlands and Shannon performed well over the summer, however, fares at Shannon continue to be materially lower than expected.
This seems to be repeated at every opportunity... Should Shannon be worried?
Changing the theme a bit, does anyone know the details of the Atlanta engineering deal? Rumours that it ends in a year or so, and that they're talking to Manston.
No, not at all. It's quite obvious for me that SNN is not the best location for the base, even for FR. Simply the "catchment area" is not big enough and it's not the best place for connecting flights to be planned there (exluding intercontinental flights of course). But do remember that FR is an Irish airline and MOL is Irish as well. So he will continue to make efforts for his firm to dominate on his country's airports even if yields weren't very good. I would expect some improvement due to new Polish routes are being created there.
I've just seen on Breakingnews.ie that Aer Arann is axing its DUB-Shannon route from 27/11. This just gives another example of how damaging the stopover is; the ATR42/72 is the ideal aircraft for this kind of route, in that this is the type of route it was designed for - and it's also a lot more environmentally friendly.
If EI didn't have the 50/50 obligation, there would be sufficient demand for Aer Arann to operate this route, because there wouldn't be anything like as many Aer Lingus flights - Aer Lingus certainly doesn't want to operate as many as it has to; it's an unavoidable consequence of the regulations. Again, everyone loses because of EU intransigence.
maybe RE should have been more daring and put on a full schedule rather than trying to fill a gap in the evening with no codeshare in the morning and no other SNN routes.
Didn't they try a full schedule a few years ago and pull it because the market insisted on using EI in the morning and RE in the evening? If they had supported the twice-daily then, it may well have become something bigger by now. One is to assume RE's latest attempt to put a late afternoon service into place was to test if the air market actually still existed - it was clearly one "local business interests" wanted restored but obviously wasn't supported in the numbers needed, maybe because it left Dublin quite early in the afternoon or maybe because the train from Limierick has improved. Time for Ryanair to pitch up to the bar on the route maybe ?
Well The AA 757 from tuesday finally departed today operating the downgraded route of snn-ord only today. Took a small delay due to the V.high crosswinds, which also caused the cancellation of both Delta flights from SNN. Also affected was the Scheduled Ryanair from LPL, which in a rare reversal of tradition diverted to ORK. A/C was put back in service early this morning after being cleared by MTC for operation, and departed on its transatlantic run with between 25 - 30 passengers onboard Scissors
Thought 13/31 was closed a long time ago, surface is pretty poor, would need resurfacing. Think it is the least of Shannon's worries, cant see any exchequer funds going in that direction, but it would help!
I am just wondering what are the loads on the daily SNN to EMA, because I wish FR would do double daily so that I can do a day-trip spotting. For the minute i'll stick with DUB.
