The knock catchment is much bigger than Shannon's considering they serve most of the northwest and over to part if the midlands
Shannons catchment area may be slightly smaller in land area, but far higher in population.
- the Bristol route is fairly well established and if anything could easily operate from both airports with ryanair as it did previously
But there is a shortage of available aircraft. It can only operate from one of the two and Shannon would be the better option IMO.
looking at numbers Kaunas seems to have performed well at knock -
I do not doubt they were, but it is a case that the route would be cheaper to operate from Shannon.
Kaunas to shannon was more of a case of moving the Lithuanian and polish services up from cork
Not really, Vilnius was the Lithuanian route operated from cork, despite what the Irish examiner thinks, it looks like a route transfer from knock.
The Knock-Kaunas route was operated by a Kaunas based aircraft
The Shannon-Kaunas route is operated by a kaunas based aircraft.
This shows a simple route change.
Great analysis but numbers mean nothing - if ryanair put in the capacity at any airport they will get the numbers due to their low fares offering - if yin annualised knocks numbers and applied to a daily service year round they would be thereabouts in shannon numbers - it's a seasonal route at prob low enough yield either way - both airports could prob sustain a servic
Numbers mean nothing? No.... Numbers mean Everything.
Knock is a very seasonal airport, with its markets very limited to paddy going to the uk, paddy going to spain or an eastern european going between Ireland and their own country. Most of this traffic comes during the summer.
Shannon is still seasonal, but not so much as knock.
Shannons market is
Paddy and the odd english man going to the U.S
Paddy going to spain.
Paddy going to england
Paddy going to france.
An easter european going between ireland and their own country.
The population within 30mins of Shannon is far larger than knock, and they are the people who almost always fly from their respective airports.
Once you venture further, options become larger.
Galway has the option of Knock, Shannon and Dublin and they each have their advantages and disadvantages.
If ryanair seen good potential at knock, they would be using it.