In some ways Aer Lingus's evaluation of their assets at Cork is quite coldly and clinically done. They are maximising their utility during the summer bucket and spade season with the daily Faro and the daily Malaga & throwing in the snn Faro rotation as well partly using a Cork asset. So, it looks like Cork - Rome is gone for a Burton - is the five years up on the subsidised charges on the route? (I cant remember what happened a few days ago!) I recently heard a few figures on the past summer's Cork - Rome load factors which were very strong so it seems a market for Rome remains but it is hard to see Ryanair flying in to take up the slack if it is indeed quits, as it seems, on the route from Aer Lingus.
My hunch is Aer Lingus will be slow to give Frankfurt a whirl from Cork. Why would they try a city which will have little weekend break attraction and may be depending on a fair measure of non code sharing connecting traffic with Lufthansa when Aer Lingus has all ready very strong hub saturation from Cork to Heathrow, Amsterdam and to a lesser extent Paris and even Brussels.
Another hunch of mine (for what it is worth, probably nothing!) is that the flyer about a new BA service from Heathrow is now a non-runner though I would still love to be proved wrong.
It seems to be mainly negative, does it not! Let us hope Cork's fortunes may improve somewhat yet for next summer - I guess they can all ways go cap in hand to Ryanair if they are really desperate not that they would get much of a reception there, would they, but maybe they might!?
Cork will just have to sit tight for another five to ten years until the Aer Lingus A321Neo comes along and blasts off to New York!
