Yesterday, Saturday, 20th May, 2006 was for once memorable for all the right reasons at Cork Airport. The morning's operations for the rugby charters both landside and airside worked well and credit where credit is due to all the people and staff that brought it all together on the day. Some folk had reported for duty on the night before and were still on duty at 9.30 am Saturday and even after all that remained in good spirits.
It was kind of sad to see the new terminal all but ignored for the operation. A big marquis was set up for the rugby check-ins on the ground floor at the back of the new multi storey car park and passengers went airside through the DHL, TNT and EMC facilities. If you like, Terminals 3, 4, 5 & 6 with the 200 million Euro Terminal 2 left out in the cold. What a pity!
Clearly, things went wrong with the boarding of the Monarch Boeing 767 as all the pax had to be disembarked again from the aircraft after boarding! That looked terrible all right. I have no idea how that problem occured but I presume the pax who boarded the 767 were meant for the second A300-600 flight later in the morning? However, it was good to see the result of some lateral brain application to get around Cork's red line problem by the new terminal for anything bigger than a 757 as the 767 was pushed tail in to the stand rather than by the nose! A Cork solution to a Cork problem!
Cork's Evening Echo on Saturday evening made a big thing of the 767 disembarkation going on about chaos at Cork Airport in banner headlines but I think their take was unfair because all other operations seemed to work out fine without any other major hitches. Top marks all around and my score for the morning would be 9/10 with just the one point being lost for the 767 boarding cock-up.
The Flyjet 757 arrived a good hour or more earlier than she ought to and at the time she had to shut down just off Taxiway Alpha as both Excel 737s, the Monarch A300 and the Verona bound Pegasus 737-400 on a hire in for Eirjet were all still on the ground so the packed ramp was quite an impressive sight. Runway 25/07 was closed too with two Aer Arann ATR parked at the 25 end and the Citation 560 was at the 07 end adorned with temporary floodlights for company for the night hours.
The Corse Air 747-400 was a wonderful sight and made the day at Cork Airport. She landed on 35 and exited at Alpha where she was then push-backed to that new stand, Stand 17, is it? She was loaded fairly quickly and all told she had 571 outbound passengers aboard for the short flight to Birmingham. What a huge load on one flight! The take off from 35 was great and as noted above she was airborne just after the intersection. That was great and she looked fabulous. Some very lucky and privileged passegers had a great treat.
A good few other bizjets and turboprops dropped in for their VIPs and along with the FlyBe BAe146 (RJ?), the two MDs from Aviajet and Dubrovnik Airline Cork Airport had a great, great day. Does not come much better than that!
Good to see some of Cork's top brass on the ground taking a real interest in the day's goings on. If I am not careful I may have to begin registering the odd note of optimism for Cork Airport's future!
