SHANNON

[danielmellor]

What Sorta Pax where carried when Aer Lingus Operated the route

and what about CityJet, would they ever operate a route like This?

[westireland]

Cityjet

CityJet suspend SNN-CDG service.

From the rte website:


CityJet has announced it is to cut its Shannon to Paris Charles de Gaulle service from24 October.
The airline, which is Air France's Irish subsidiary, has blamed a decline in demand for its decision to pull the route, which began in February 2008.
In a statement, the company said the economic downturn has affected the route's performance, and with no sign of it breaking even in the near future the decision was made to cancel the service.

[MUFC_fan]

Nothing to do with Aer Lingus going to LHR then...

[airnoc]

People of shannon told to use the paris cdg route or lose it

[ryan2000]

City Jet

This service was probably doomed once EI decided to go back on SNN LHR. Irish people have an instinctive attraction to transiting via LHR although CDG is in many ways is more user friendly.

Looks as if the legacy carriers LH and AF will confine themselves to Dublin for the forseeable future and leave Shannon to Ryanair.

[peacock1]

........CDG user friendly? You must be joking. Terminal 1...old, dirty, a great view of..poured mass concrete, and terminal 2 , while a bit more aesthetically pleasing, has abiding memories of unmerciful scrums of people trying to get through security before impending flight departures!
And that's before your bags don't show up if you're connecting.
I've been through there, connecting, 6 times.
Got my bags once, or maybe twice.
Horrible, grey, concrete place.
Ams is streets ahead.

[ryan2000]

LHR v CDG

The AF/City jet operation through CDG is surely better than having to transfer from terminal 1 to terminal 5 at LHR particularly as it doesn't involve changing terminals. I agree that AMS is the best of the 3 althought its range of connections isn't as good.

The tube like pier serving the Irish gates at LHR can be hot and stuffy and the recent innovation which sees departing pax being boxed in to prevent them from mixing with incoming passengers is particularly annoying and somewhat clusterphobic.

[EI-BUD]

In my experience CDG was not a pleasant connection point. I felt that it was not clearly signposted and the terminal layout seemed complicated. Ie I felt like it was one big terminal.

I like LHR for connections despite the bad press that LHR gets a connection point, perhaps this is because I have been there so often I know it better.

As for AMS I think the range of connections at AMS is excellent... I would agree however the area of the gates for Departures to ROI at LHR hot and stuff especially if you are delayed until 12 noon when you arrived on a 615am arrival from the states and you were due to take off after 8am!!!

[liam1970]

Farewell Cityjet/Air France

This is no surprise to me as Cityjet had removed Shannon from their website over the Summer; booking was only possible through Air France website. I don't think they were really trying on this route since Aer Lingus returned.
Shame though, it was a good service and I do think CDG is far better than the Heathrow 'tube' departure gates.

[seatrumpeter]

So that's why it wasn't coming up when I was searching for HKG-SNN flights. I used the service in August and September and although the connection times in CDG were long, I didn't have any real problem with the airport except that the long bus ride out to the plane was not very convenient with two young children.

Both times the CDG-SNN flights were 50-70% full.

Now airfares from Hong Kong are doubled with Air France off the route and for my November trip it looks like I am having to route through Dublin.

[gaelgeoir]

Preclearance

I note that Shannon's Preclearance facility is being used by BA's new LCY-NY service since 29th September- great to see this prestige, all-business service using this unique feature.

BBC NEWS | Business | BA's new business class only plane

[RB311]

BBC BA Video

Having just watched that video, it just goes to prove how little BBC journalists either understand the subject they're talking about or how little actual research they bother to put in before making the report, because he explains that aircraft from London City have to fly out of the airport at 5 degrees rather than the normal 3 degrees!!!

Why oh why don't they even think about what they're saying before they say it....

[brian_dromey]

I see that Shannon-Gerona has been cancelled by Ryanair, blaming APD, as usual - which might be slightly justified.

Should be good news for ORK-Barcelona though.

[fivejuliet]

Ah yeah, Brian's first outta the traps to toot Cork's horn....

[CCR]

The thing about Shannon is that it has the longest runway in the country and has a great range of services both short haul and long haul compared to its population base. The powers that be should really go after the likes of FedEX, DHL and UPS to try to make it a transatlantic cargo hub for connecting deliveries to/from Europe. To improve access to the airport, a rail link should be provided to the airport from the nearby Limerick-Galway rail line.

[gaelgeoir]

Shannon potential

Shannon's infrastructure- runway enabling unlimited operation, Preclearance, support services etc, will facilitate adding value from non-local markets such as technical stops, transatlantic diversions, freight, corporate aviation, U.S. and other State-related transportation (UN missions etc.). In that sense it's not solely dependent on the local market and brings economic activity to Ireland in a way that no other Irish airport can. So irrespective of how the Irish market is performing- and it's in a lull everywhere at the moment, Shannon will continue to play a valuable economic role from a national perspective.

[Charlie Roy]

So irrespective of how the Irish market is performing- and it's in a lull everywhere at the moment, Shannon will continue to play a valuable economic role from a national perspective.

At the end of the day, the airport needs to be profitable, and I wish it the best of luck in that respect.

[anto nov]

Well done Gaelgeoir, Its nice to hear some positive comments from Irish posters in this regard. Shannon has always depended on its strategic location rather than its geographic location to create business. We should be proud of its history and its donation to World aviation despite more than its share of bad press.

[ALLMCC]

Interesting news article here - wonder what routes will appear - BHD for one here's hoping!

Shannon boost as Aer Arann flights set to take off again - Irish, Business - Independent.ie

[CCR]

Great news
Aer Arann could introduce a feeder service from Belfast City airport where passengers could go through US immigration at Shannon and connect onwards to US services similar to the BA service from London City airport.
Aer Arann could also introduce an interline service to Dublin to connect onwards to Aer Lingus transatlantic destinations not served from Shannon, similar to what they do from Cork.
I think that Dublin and Belfast are the only 2 routes in Ireland that would be viable from Shannon.
Abroad, they could look at services to Paris CDG that CityJet are terminating and Amsterdam that Skynet used do. The ATR is a lot more fuel efficient than an Avro regional jet or 737 and both services would need to be interlining services to these hubs. In addition, they could be pretty confident that Ryanair would not fly to AMS or CDG.