Yez are working very late tonight, lads! That is as close as we are to good news tonight for Cork following on from the news of RE's intention to chop ORK-LBA from end of August.
Pretty grim news - one would have thought LBA would have been okay with Aer Arann?
Thats a real pity. I think the route has become a victim of the overcapacity caused by the Aer Lingus - Bmi Baby battle on Cork-Manchester. Leeds has a direct rail line to Manchester airport and with loads of cheap flights to Manchester now available most people seem to take the cheaper alternative to Manchester and get the train rather than pay a premium to use Aer Arann to LBA. Perhaps Jet2 will consider picking up the route considering their large base at LBA? With Shannon-LBA axed by Ryanair since the start of this month passengers from Munster wanting to fly to Leeds now have to travel to Dublin.
On another note the EI725 from Heathrow was cancelled last night for the second time in 3 days presumably since it was running so late (they can't take off from Heathrow after midnight). Flights are running 90 minutes late today (as a result of the cancellation last night) so the 725 might be cancelled again tonight. The A321 really seems to be struggling to keep to timetable at busy times when high loads mean longer turnaround times. The same thing happened before Christmas when the 724/725 was cancelled a number of times since the 321 was running so far behind schedule. I hope the whole summer won't be like this. The current timetable has turnaround times of just 45 minutes between some flights which just isn't enough when the 220 seater A321 has heavy loads.