Originally Posted by Tom the Tenor
An EI A330-200 is a no go for routine operations on Cork-New York. Will not happen. I have good counsel on this one.
I tend to agree that it won't happen unless some other airline shows signs of operating Cork-New York. In terms of what you've heard, is it a purely business decision or are practicalities like the length of runway and lack of a parallel taxiway in Cork involved.
Originally Posted by EI896
I think a Brussles route out of EICK would be an excellent expansion for Aer Lingus if the costs were low
The Glasgow expansion would be good the loads were meant to be excellent on the Loganair route, and I don't know why they gave it up? It seems fairly stupid to me? So if Aer Lingus or Ryanair even steped in and provided a route to Prestwick or the main airport in Glasgow it would be excellent.
Two problems here.
Firstly, specifically with the Brussels route, you have to take into account the impact on yields to Amsterdam and Paris. There is a direct hourly train from Amsterdam airport to Brussels and the journey time is a little over two hours. This is the most common way people travel between Cork and Brussels. It is entirely practical to leave Cork on the morning Amsterdam flight and still be in Brussels by midday using this service. Similarly, you can leave Brussels as late as just before 5 pm and still make the evening Amsterdam-Cork rotation. Travelling up from Paris is another option. Aer Lingus have to be very careful with their yield out of Cork and any flight to Brussels is likely to mostly rob passengers off existing EI services.
Secondly, on a more practical level all their aircraft in Cork are fully utilised. Any new routes would require either a new aircraft or dropping of service or frequency on existing routes. Who knows, maybe one of the couple of A320s still to be delivered will be assigned to Cork, but it would be a while yet before it turned up.