This thread never ceases to amuse me. How many of us have done parked at Aldergrove to the City centre in 15 mins. I have done it to the City Airport in 15 at not much less than 100mph for most of the way and on the motorbike in 11 mins at double the speed limit but maybe Ulsterbus know a shortcut?
I also have to disagree with diversion ex BHD being in any way common.
There are about 40,000 movements there a year so thats roughly 20,000 inbound flights and out of those how many would end up being diverted in a year. You can`t count the diversions due out of hours operations as what you are getting at is mainly though not exclusively the weather factors.
Fog (with visibility below 550 metres rings a bell), excessive Crosswind component, Snow Closure, Rwy/Lighting/Navaid unserviceability and aircraft defects requiring longer rwy length eg. flapless landing on wet rwy are the main reasons that come to mind straight away.
Don`t forget that some of the diversions won`t even go to Aldergrove as the conditions there may be very similar and it is simply a matter of crew or aircraft weather minima in regard to visibility or cloud base.
Ok so lets try to guestimate, i`ll say that in an average year through the above conditions Belfast City loses less than thirty flights to Aldergrove. That is less than 0.15% of inbound aircraft and in my book that can never be described as either common or unacceptable. Anyone got a better guess?
However for the record I think it would not be a good move for Continental to leave their home in the countryside as in my very simplistic view it is way too close to the acceptable limits of the aircraft performance and parking limits and offers limited expansion possibilty.