Last month the 2 routes attracted 16,165 passengers between them and were building each month.
Maybe the two routes were damaging the corresponding routes from Shannon too much. Shannon-East Midlands for example had a massive 45% drop in passengers between July 2007 and July 2008, falling from 9147 to 5005. Both routes were carrying more passengers than the corresponding routes from Shannon, in July for example Cork-East Midlands carried 71% more pasengers than Shannon-East Midlands (8562 vs. 5005) despite identical frequency.
Would that 20% refer to the fact that one year of the route support scheme has elapsed or have charges genuinely risen by that much?
Charges haven't risen at all. However under the route support scheme, airlines pay no charges in year 1 and 20% charges in year 2. If Ryanair had continued with the routes they would have started to pay 20% charges from December.
Release then claims that this will cost the airport 200,000 passengers per annum; the loss of 200 local jobs, the loss of €20,000,000.00 in tourism revenue and a 6% decline in passenger numbers using the airport.
Even by Ryanair's standard of press release, this is hysterical
I'd fully agree. That's ridiculous even by Ryanair standards. Thats presuming that every flight was completely full and everyone was travelling from the UK to Cork! (no outward tourism).
This should barring anymore developments from RYR, nicely increase the yields for RE on the EDI route. With a RYR reduction, is there potential for RE to jump on to the EMA route perhaps?
Yes this should secure the future of RE on Cork-Edinburgh as well as Aer Lingus and BMI Baby on Cork-Birmingham. Also is this not a perfect opportunity for Aer Lingus to launch Cork-Glasgow 4 times weekly since they will have free afternoon slots on one of the based aircraft 4 afternoons per week when Prague ends in November..