Originally Posted by
AerRyan
That's the golden question isn't it?
I'm not entirely sure of the answer, but these are what I'd imagine to be some of the reasons :
1. Very few Airlines will touch Cork and Shannon due to Aer Lingus and Ryanair who will frighten them off.
2. The high airport fees in Cork and previously in Shannon.
3. Lack of Awareness of routes and airports. Many people all over Ireland (slightly ignorantly) think Dublin straight away and book with only Aer Lingus and Ryanair. It's alot of the problem in Ireland, lots of people don't look around and compare. We are no longer in a country of government monopolies.
4. As you pointed out earlier, the sheer around of airports on the west coast. In the republic, there is 1 airport on the east coast and 5 on the west coast (inc cork) and there was previously 7! There is no need for Donegal or Kerry airports, the only thing keeping them going is the PSO contract. All of Donegal is very near Derry Airport which has more services and all of Kerry is very near Shannon and Cork.
If anyone wants to add to the above please.
ORK has AMS. The reason the rest don't work now, and in my opinion won't work again, is pretty much the only thing we got right in the boom time: The motorway network. Eircoach, Citybus etc combined with better frequency and cheaper fares from DUB will only result in one thing. The buzzword in the entire industry ATM is consolidation. Remote towers, merged FIRs, merged airlines consolidating services at their hubs. In the current climate more regional airports can only realistically expand with the LCCs due to their lower charges fitting with those airlines' business models. That's a double edged sword, to put it mildly.
There's no conspiracy against the regionals, the problem is it's cheaper and often more convenient for onward connections for people to bus up to DUB and fly from there. SNN, ORK, KOC etc will never support the 20 something flights DUB has to LHR each day