Talking about what gives you the willies on approach to Cork Airport. Well, it was more of the same last Thursday morning on the FR901 from Stansted to Cork with the Mrs, her Mum, her brother and myself as we had the ride of our lives on our early morning flight after having first checked in around 4.30 am! The storm begun whipping up goodo taxiing out to Stansted's runway 23 and the climbout up to about FL150/170 was a rollercoaster. We levelled off at FL320 & it was reasonably smooth until after our descent began into Cork with the captain advising that the winds were staying just within limits for an approach (to 17.)
Did not stay that way though as the crew threw away the approach shortly after becoming established around 1500 feet when the winds went out of limits at 260 degrees, 30 kts gusting 42 kts. Got a good view of the airfield in the go around! Stayed in the Nagl hold for a bit until we were told the wind had abated & the captain decided to shoot one more approach at Cork. We got much closer this time but at approx 700/800 feet on finals I got a grand view of the extended centreline and lit runway ahead and remember we were were sitting in about Row 18 for the flight and not on the flightdeck! The winds got us once more and it was 260/28 kts with a gust of 37 knots, up to 44 knots.
That was that for Cork and after a 2 hours & 2 minutes flight from Stansted our flight, FR901, eventually landed at Shannon where surface transport to Cork was provided. It was good to land to be sure as even the approach to runway 24 at snn was still fairly rough even though we were into the wind. Spoke with the Captain briefly and he agreed that runway 25 at Cork would be good. What chance of that though? For all we know one of these days there may be grand plan in Cork to close runway 25/07 and put in a few warehouses instead to complement the Business Park across the way and that would be the end of the occasional EI A320 landing on runway 25 in the strong westerly winds.
Makes you think does it not? If runways are to be closed why not shut 17/35 and put up as many warehouses and business parks as you like as long as you lay down an extra 4,000 feet at the end of 25/07? We cant be as sensible as that though, now can we, as that would be getting something right and not arseways and we just could not have that at Cork Airport!
