The procession of arrival and departure of airlines at Cork has made me wonder what the revenue picture at Cork is really like. I know CSA and Malev were hardly the last word in financially stable airlines but it does seem that when times get tough ORK routes get the chop, none appear to be able to sustain any competition, even without competition when the incentives finish the routes seem to as well.
I would guess that ORK routes are fairly marginal -even in good times, only FR and EI have the brands to make it work. Their advertising is spread across all their routes from Cork, newcomers do not have this advantage. For non-based carriers it makes more sense to send aircraft elsewhere, where they don't have to battle FR's attempts to manipulate a price sensitive market. Why bother?