Speaking of loads and the like, well, a friend of the family went to New York last week from Shannon on the Continental Airlines flight to Newark and there was just about 80 pax aboard to New York. Ok, it was the middle of January and you have to take that into account but I would hazard a guess that a Cork to NYC pax load would be no worse?
With all the contacts the board of Cork Airport might have to big, multinational business they ought to put a word in their ears and get some capital together for one or two of those new Boeing 737-700ERs. Put in some business class seats for the high yielding pax and you could still easily have about 130 seats avaialble for long haul flights ex Cork.
It will be interesting to see how Knock fares with the Irish Dept of Transport now that the Yanks have approved the Flyglobespan flights from Liverpool to New York. If an exception is made for Knock, well, why not Cork?