Indeed. I would imagine that any A320NEOs used would be a defensive option at Dublin and Shannon rather than something to expand in Cork.
In the meantime, figures for August see passengers up 7.2%
At the same time, detailed route figures are available for May from the CSO. Without putting all the figures up here, some notable features (comparing May 2017 to May 2016)
- 60% of LCY traffic seems to have migrated to other London airports
- Amsterdam and Paris down a significant amount. I believe both lost rotations to sun destinations. It's a bit of a contrast to the bizarre war on the AMS route going on in Dublin
- KEF carried an average of 74 pax per flight in May. While loads will always be a bit lower in the first few weeks of a flight, it indicates the struggle on the route
- Disappointing performance from German routes, with Munich down 14% and Dusseldorf down 10%. Did days of week mean fewer flights on one or both of these?
- Sun routes a mixed bag. Serious growth on Malaga, Alicante, Palma, Split [new] and Dubrovnik, but slight declines on Barcelona, Faro and the Canaries. Overall positive though.
- Good growth on some UK regional routes (MAN, EDI, GLA, BHX, SOU, NQY), but others being down (CWL, BRS, LPL, NCL [a particularly steep fall), LBA [Canned])
- Very small decline on Polish routes, but really only fractional