Yup more that a few times and they can still afford to rebuild one every 5 years and would still cost less than Cork.
Then again Marseille total only has 8 million plus pax.
Time for some more maths, BTS spend €96 million (69.7 by Government) and it handled just 1.4 million passengers in 2012 and it has capacity for 5 million. The terminal was build while passenger numbers declined every year since 2008. Construction started in 2010 BTW.
At least the DAA build a terminal when passenger numbers were on the up and the taxpayer isn't footing the bill.
Aerlingus' operation in Cork is back at 2005 levels. They quietly closed Gatwick and Rome this Summer and have also withdrawn from Berlin, Warsaw, Prague and Madrid in the last few years while franchising out Birmingham and Manchester to EI regional.
Their bucket and Spade strategy has worked for them but has produced little or no growth at the airport as many of the Charter flights have ceased as a result.
In contrast Ryanair's growth at Cork since 2010 has been spectacular although as Jamie says most of it has been head to head competition with Aerlingus and Wizzair. It'll be interesting to see what tneir next move will be particularly as they're paying premium charges for most of their routes.
Maybe they've concluded that Cork is where the population is in the South of the Country and that trying to play it off against Shannon or Kerry just isn't worth the hassle!
It may be back at 2005 levels but the economy is back a lot further. Cork is still holding up reasonably well considering. It was fine for EI to operate those European routes then as it was more loco and it worked or that what we believe but over the last few years charges at those airports have increased massively particularly FCO, WAR and SXF while APD in the UK is damaging UK service and then their is charges here and out 3 euro tax. Then not forgetting fuel costs. All adds up. EI have being priced out of the market by external factors and people don't want to pay high fares for these so they have little choice but to close these services.
EI short haul services are still very weak and this winter will be one of the hardest yet for them.