More than likely there will never be any runway extensions to 17/35 or 25/07, a parallel taxiway, a CATIII ILS for a long, long time to come. Nothing. Why you may ask? One, the airlines will not come out publicly and seek these much needed improvements in case it would affect their bottom line by having to pay a bit extra in charges. Two, many Cork politicians are mugs just like a lot of their electorate and the airport is so far down the list of priorities locally it just does not count. The DAA and CAA etc know this well and they are successfully able to fob off Cork passengers and the public up to their eyeballs and blame diversions on fog, winds etc and a lot of the time the public buy it from them hook, line and sinker and they get away with all the spin. For example, on a recent occasion the fact that some flights at Shannon were also affected by strong cross winds was enough of an excuse to explain why Cork had also weather affected flights and that made it all so understandable and, Viola, the crowd at the airport are in the clear with the public!
I have been in London all week due to a family bereavement and I returned to Cork this morning on FR901 for the weekend before having to head back again on Monday next for the funeral on Tuesday. Well, let me tell you all the final approach down the ILS to 17 this morning scared the daylights out of me, we were being tossed all over the place in the turbulent crosswinds, the landing was very hard and rollout was like a Metropolitan Police car on two wheels going around a corner like I saw yesterday in the North London area. The corner was as tight as the runway is at Cork!
It is so plainly obvious that runway 25/07 should be the runway of choice at Cork in the prevailing winds. This has been such a hard winter at Cork for go arounds and diversions off runway 17 you would think lessons would be noted for the future but with the kind of weak leadership there is from the politicians, the players at Cork Airport and from among the general public our airport will continue only to be second class or worse. Even the precious new heartless terminal cannot park a widebody such as a 767 or an A330 nose in to the new terminal? If not, what a farce the place is.
If you are interested in what happens to Cork Airport there is little choice but to carry on but I am now so full of pessimism I have reached such a new low.
And you can forget yer North Atlantic. The Bluebird Cargo 737 from Iceland and the Tango 9 airway down to Faro and the Canaries is our lot at Cork.