Originally Posted by mart901
I hear all those points but it does seem like you are trying to find every way to say there shouldn't be flights from the US to NOC. Surely if NOC can attract an airline and make it work, whats the issue? Whilst I agree NOC is not exactly the epicenter of global aviation its done very well in the last few years and whilst the arguments for being business friendly and having links to say LHR do carry some weight, I think if it was likely to happen it would have done by now. Given that the airport has 3 daily flights to LON, daily to BHX, up to daily MAN,LPL,EDI,BRS and various scheduled and charter sun routes even Turkey this year why on earth not the US? Its much more likely to win on a US run than trying to flog a dead horse on european routes or yet another LON flight.
I smell a twinge of fear in some of the posts on here, that NOC may take from DUB or SNN, otherwise why the fuss? If you think it will fail don't worry, thats a mistake NOC would have to live with.
I'm not saying NOC couldn't support say a twice weekly service to the states, maybe it could. But given that at the height of the Celtic Tiger, it could only support a 4 weekly service to New York/Boston at low enough fares, I'd have my doubts.
In any case (and this applies to other airports such as ORK, BFS, and even SNN), I'm just saying it makes better economic sense to have high frequency long-haul flights through a major hub airport such as DUB rather than have them spread across multiple airports, which will not only reduce frequency of service but also yield, and we could end up with a lower number of overall flights as a result, and that's without mentioning the impact on businesses.
You mentioned the situation in the UK with everything going through Heathrow. The UK is a country of 60 million people, so it makes perfect sense that cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh could sustain long-haul flights in addition to services via London. Even taking the whole island of Ireland, it still only has a population of just under 7 million. So you're not comparing like-with-like. Even with the business and cultural links with the US, Ireland cannot sustain flights to the US from multiple airports. Right now, apart from Newark, Shannon can't even sustain year-round flights and Belfast can't even support a daily flight on it's only US link. Some of Dublin's US routes are also only seasonal. So the idea that NOC could sustain it's own network of transatlantic routes and that this would have no effect on overall services to the country is madness.