I have been thinking a bit about Jack85's post over lunch!
You know, the Turkish story is quite interesting from a Cork point of view. Turkish has a pretty diverse fleet of aircraft from Boeing 737-700/800/900ERs and other narrow body Airbus A319/320 & 321. They have A330s, A340s & Boeing 777s.
Now, if they were so keen on increasing capacity on Istanbul - Dublin they could easily replaced a smaller narrowbody with either A321 or 737-900ER or they could have really upped the ante all together with an A330? Would this have been easier for them rather than increasing frequency? For the past year the departure time ex Dublin has been later morning/early afternoon which is, on the whole, a rather ideal time?
I wonder how much work was done to try and get Turkish to Cork and if it was anyway encouraging could the Fort Dublin crowd have muscled to make certain it went in a more favourable direction from that point of view?
My head is away too fried to be going down the conspiracy road but I wonder what sort of deal has been done to get the extra Turkish services into Dublin? It is, after all, an all ready existing route from Istanbul to Dublin so how could it be a better deal than what Cork may be able to offer?