the Cork route is strategically important
I dont see that Cork/Gatwick is strategivcally important. And any suggestion on here that Aer Lingus doing Cork/Gatwick in the context of having some sort of tie up with Aer Arann makes no sense. Aer Lingus serve London very well from Cork and they can offer the connections via LHR (or with RE in future via Dublin)
Cork/Gatwick with Aer Lingus will be mainly point to point traffic as BA is scaling back and all interline traffic can use LHR, and Aer Lingus are going head to head with Ryanair. Absolutely crazy, doing this route is no different than that the situation on the Dublin routes. Ryanair will end up basing another aircraft in Cork to allow for another daily rotation and then they may end up opening up other routes ex Cork. I forsee that Ryanair will increase schedule on Gatwick/Cork and will not offer Aer Lingus this on a plate, It will be like Easyjet on this route all over again and I wouldnt be surprised if Ryanair decide to target Aer Lingus' remaining routes ie Knock, Malaga to Gatwick.
Or will Ryanair decide to 'rescue Aer Lingus passengers' by launching a base at LGW and offering all of the closed routes to illustrate how they can do them so effectively?
It is easy to debate how wrong the lgw lauch was but at the outset it seemed like a strong proposition, if a big market like a London airport wont work for Aer Lingus I cant see how any other base would work, despite how much I like Aer Lingus I see this as a big admission of the company's unsuitability for any bases outside of the Island of Ireland.
EI-BUD