Well, let us hope that Cork Airport's ILS CATII status may be resumed as quickly as possible and let us hope a Calibrator may be called in too without delay to check it out and to give it the all clear. The earlier talk of having to wait until September has been waffle and has sounded liked penny pinching whether intentional or not and tell that to last Friday's passengers whom were so shabbily inconvenienced to see what they might say about that one. Wear your hard hat, I suggest!
What is of even more concern to me about this dreadful debacle is the harm to the long term reputation of Cork Airport. This is a matter for both the Irish Aviation Authority and the Dublin Airport Authority to address in the days ahead. What are both Authorities going to do for Cork Airport in order to reassure passengers and potential passengers whose experience of the Cork facility may now be tarnished after the events of last Friday.
Perhaps like with Sean Quinn and Anglo Irish the IAA and maybe the DAA took a gamble on the timing of Cork's ILS downtime - they were caught out with the weather at Cork and they lost on the gamble?
The DAA has been to my mind too quiet to date on this matter. Why? Well, one reason for that is for every diversion from Cork to either Dublin or to the airport in the Midwest the DAA have still collected on the landing fees etc so at a corporate level they have not lost out at all and if in the future any potential Cork passengers chose instead the drive up along to M8 to connect with flights from Dublin the DAA still wins.
So, this is what Cork has to face up to now. Be it the IAA, the DAA, both, or both combined, an awful lot of making up has to be shown now towards Cork. My suggestion would be for the purse strings to be loosened up rather kindly and in the first instance for funds to be set aside for a locally focused marketing drive to reassure Cork Airport passengers and for encouraging the ongoing use of the facility and secondly, another sum for a powerful marketing drive to go out and get some much needed new business for Cork Airport.
The IAA might like to consider doing everything in it's considerable power to facilitate any possible new runway extension for Cork as well if that was ever to come to pass!
And I have not even mentioned North America!
