The aircraft sit on the ground for a very good reason, there's nowhere for them to go. Speaking as a Corkonian I have to agree with Aer Lingus, for example 840 why add additional services to CDG when you can increase the price of existing flights and get even higher yield? Sounds terrible to the average punter - But its the best thing they can do, why send an aircraft to say Faro twice a week in Winter at a loss, when you can park the aircraft and actually reduce losses, its logical what they're doing and until such time the economy in this country recovers to an extent where Aer Lingus can create new opportunities in a typically low quarter of travel as they do in the summer is when sustainable growth will return to Cork.
It's plain and simple. The people of Cork have voted with their feet ever since adam was a babe. They would rather fly into LHR to go just about anywhere than flying with the local carriers. Unfortunately you get what you sow. To expect AL to wear a loss and build up routes whilst the locals fly with everyone else ain't a runner.
Sometimes people can't see the wood from the trees. Rather than realising that competition was good for average fares you deserted Wizz in favour of FR. Then they pulled off not surprisingly when loads/yield softened and they realised they could make more money elsewhere on the network outside of Cork. Same happened with Aer Arran. Now you all give out about how you can't connect in off regional to Dublin to get to the US but have to drive to Dublin or more bizarrely fly east to LHR.
All routes have to be profitable from day 1 - that has been the management edict for the past 5 years. AL ain't a charity.
Erm who's say we expect Aer Lingus to run up losses, certainly not anyone involved in this industry, it's our jobs that rely on them being profitable.
''You deserted Wizz.'' It frankly laughable you believe locals were using Wizz, they transported poles to/from Poland - Simple. Ryanair although they wiped them out unfortunately have created tourism in Poland from Cork, you should see how busy their services to Krakow and Warsaw are with Irish punters, something I rarely saw on Wizz bar during the Euro's from Cork! No one with a brain believes Cork will get T/A services in the next century, frankly it shouldn't even be researched, Management need to get a stable footing with existing services and grow demand. Aer Arann will be making an announcement in the next while for Cork, Aer Lingus have created sustainable growth and Ryanair aren't going to be doing anything we know that. Aer Lingus operated a Cork base wholly profitable since it grew here, they made a loss during the last few Winters and cut Barcelona, Berlin, Rome and more and reduced services to Geneva and Malaga to name but a few and finally are operating to a point out of Cork they deem sustainable - For example next Summer they have cut Lisbon, to replace it with a Shannon-Malaga service, although this is annoying for Cork Airport, it's Aer Lingus trying to make sure they operate wholly profitable from Cork in the Summer and who could blame them.