Jetmagic began routes to Britain last September coming to the end of the summer season. Hardly the best time. Routes to London City and Liverpool were were very poorly supported with Edinburgh performing somewhat better, perhaps sustainable at some time in the future.
Brussels was cut from two to one daily service around the end of August start of September 2003 and the route was axed completely at the end of October. It is ironic that in the last five weeks or so of the Brussels service the loads had improved and quite dramatically so at times. In recent weeks there were rumours that Brussels might have been reinstated - perhaps, not a bad idea!
On the whole Belfast performed satisfactorily and reasonably good loads have been sustained even through the winter period so no great problem there with Belfast.
The French destinations to Nantes and Nice did very, very well all last summer and were doing okay over the winter months too, not great but more than reasonable for the time of year. Paris CDG was a loser though and it should not have been - a 6 pm departure must have been a bummer - early morning surely would have been a better bet?
Alicante and Barcelona had wonderful loads throughout last summer and continued to do well enough through the winter. ALC and BCN were cancelled just once in recent weeks to the best of my knowledge.
Not as sure of how Milan and Rome have been doing over the winter. The loads were fine last summer and at the Christmas period there were quite a few 30+ loads. Yesterday, there were 28 pax from Milan. Both the Italian routes were due to be dropped for the coming summer. The dropping of Rome was disappointing but as it was a three hour flight there and another three hours back they probably wanted the aircraft to do some shorter sectors - there was talk of two new routes to France. Milan was more understandable as EI are due to go there twice weekly for the coming summer.
Brussels with two daily rotations, London City with two to three daily rotations and Liverpool with two daily rotations along with Paris CDG really helped to screw Jetmagic. They did have a new slot for a 0735 departure to LCY which would have meant better loads for the summer due to overflow from standbys on EI to LHR but that is just history now.
There was just not enough cash flow from the business routes in particular - I wonder is the moral of the story to stick to leisure routes ex Cork for a new entrant? Maybe so, but how sustainable on smaller regional jet aircraft and for bigger aircraft Cork is just too small?
What a sad day for aviation in Cork.
