CORK - 5

[Charlie Roy]

jet2_at_blk

Well considering recent history BMI baby have been on the Manchester and Birmingham routes before Aer Lingus.

Aer Lingus' attempts to compete with BMI Baby are disastrously half-hearted and will ultimately cost them a lot of money

They could theoretically beat BMI baby off these routes, but certainly not with the miserable schedules they are currently offering.

[hafez]

RTE:

The board of Cork Airport Authority has indicated that it does not accept the terms of a proposal put to the authority by Government which would see it pay €100m of a €220m debt.
In a statement tonight, Cork Airport Authority indicated it would be hiring consultants to enable it to negotiate what it described as satisfactory terms and conditions with the Dublin Airport Authority and Department of Transport.
The disagreement over who should pay the debt at Cork Airport stems from a promise made by then Transport Minister Seamus Brennan in July 2003 that the airport would be debt-free when it gained its independence.
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In the statement, the board of CAA said it was not yet in a position to evaluate the proposal from government.
However it said it would be appointing consultants to enable the authority to prepare a business plan and negotiate terms with the DAA and the Department of Transport.
A source close the authority stressed that its statement did not amount to a rejection of the debt payment proposal tabled by the Government.

Wonder what's going to happen!?

[jet2_at_blk]

Absolutely correct!

If they were to have a higher schedule, they would surely be able to compete, and even overthrough BMIBaby on both routes, but at the moment, BMIBaby has the upper hand!

P.S. Surely one of the main reasons why Irish citizens visit Manchester is toattend football matches at Manchester United Football club. I recall being in Manchester airport the morning after a Byer Leverkusen game, and there were more Irish in the terminal than English! The exodus from Ireland to Old Trafford will be a major plus for EI,WW and FR on the Irish routes. If so, why does EI and WW offer flights on Saturdays at bad times. Afternoon flights to MAN is not what the football fans ordered. Surely a morning flight departure from ORK on the Saturday would suit the passengers better.

Anyway, not all the passengers are Manchester United fans!

[Charlie Roy]

The consultants will work up a bill of €100 million - hehe

Only joking, I'm glad they are going to fight this!

[ryan2000]

Charlie Roy is correct, the Aerlingus decision to cut MAN to a miserely 3 per week probably led WW to have a go at them in April, May and September. EI half hearted attitude will lose them a fortune on ORK-BHX and ORK-MAN.

[brian_dromey]

To be honest, I see WW becomming stronger and stronger on their BHX and MAN routes. Even local authority officials are booking WW on travel to BHX and MAN, mainly because they do not know EI operate on the route! Add in teh half assed schedule and pretty unremarkable fares, and you have to wonder why EI bother. I remember a time when BHX was 2x dialy with EI on a 146 and MAN was 3x daily with BA on an Avro/ERJ-145. The fares on MAN could be as low as £49IRP! That was with full service as well!

Now that WW are diamond club members there is even less reason to choose EI. What I would love to see is a based BD 319 @ ORK to operate 3x daily LHR and once daily MAN and BHX. With MAN and BHX crews/aircraft doing the second rotation of the day on their route. The 319 could be used for charters at the weekend, and the LHR route would be great for connections to the star alliance, which are woeful from ORK at the minute.

Brian.

[Ger Cork]

I know there is a lot of competition in Dublin; 2 or 3 carriers for a lot of routes but you see the only competition in Cork is in the UK. Are you telling me Aer Lingus have expansion plans to Europe from Cork, where they have enough flights too by the way? What Cork needs now are more carriers like I mentioned e.g. Lufthansa, SAS, Air France and perhaps Alitalia and not two carriers like Aer Shamrock and TaxiAir. But an important thing for Cork now is to put in the four airbridges. Demand and potential for a lot of new routes from Cork to Europe is there, but the marketing department have to go out and secure it. If it is true that Cork Airport are in serious negotiations with at least 2 or 3 of the major American carriers to New York JFK and Boston then that’s fantastic news and that is exactly what Cork needs – I hope it is Delta and either American or United Airlines they are negotiating with and Cork would also need flights to Philadelphia 2 or 3 times a weeks for the summer and also Chicago for 4 flights a week but that’s for another day. Delta and American/United first to New York and Boston would be fantastic perhaps with a 767 and 757. What’s even more important now is that first of all Cork Airport Authority do not sell off 30 or 40 acres of land which is vital for Cork Airports’ future and they demand their share of Great Southern Hotels and Aer Rianta International to pay off the debt and leave them shower of eejits in Dublin to go away.

P.S. I think Joe Gantley should resign too as chairman from the board – bring back Joe O’Connor.

On the issue of the €100million debt the question now is are Cork Airport Authority better off accepting the huge debt getting its full independence from Dublin Airport Authority, having the 40acres of land transferred over to them to decide what they want to do with it either lease out the land for industrial development or perhaps some kind of joint venture with some interested parties – something like the Cork Airport Business Park and not leave DAA get their hands on it. What Cork Airport vitally needs are more flights and more passengers just barely handling 3 million in 2006 Cork perhaps could be handling between 5.7 million passengers per year a lout of potential remains untapped.

If Cork Airport do decide that in its best interests to pay off the debt long-term will they have to increase landing charges which would kill off the airport? I certainly hope not because then you certainly will not attract the major American carriers i.e. Delta, American, United, U.S. Airways, Air Canada when Open Skies comes in and these services are vital to the growth of Cork Airport. By the way will Cork get to be allowed to put in the 4 airbridges as was promised first day? Another option woyuld be to lease out the old-terminal to a lot cost carrier although personally I hope not. What I would like to see is more carriers and more destinations to both Europe and North America. I also hope that fiasco is not forgotten in a few weeks and we lobby intensively like Shannon Airport have done and you can be sure would do it again now as well. Interesting times ahead.

[840]

Within Europe, I find it hard to see much expansion coming from outside EI, FR and RE.

Yields would be too low on pretty much all routes for foreign flag carriers to touch them. There are a few exceptions. LH could probably make a bit of money on a Frnkfurt connection, but they probably have more profitable things to do with their aircraft and Frankfurt slots. AF could attempt a route to somewhere in western France (Bordeaux perhaps) as a way of squeezing a bit of extra utilization out of an aircraft. If WX started DUB-AMS, they would probably take on ORK-AMS as well, which could mean a CDG route from them, but at the moment, DUB-AMS isn't in their plans.

The two possible exceptions could be flag carriers from the Baltic states who could make a go of serving their expat populations in Cork and as there are no direct connections to Scandinavia and because they could feed into Baltic destinations, SAS could just be tempted.

Otherwise, you're looking at LoCos. It would be great to see one of the German LoCos come in, but would it get a heavy response from Ryanair?

We're probably stuck with trying to get the exiting carriers to expand their operations in Cork.

I don't know how much use there is discussing route expansion from Cork though, when we still don't have anyone coming in to take over the Glasgow route.

[JDB1052]

Has Arann's "7 wonders" ad which promotes all that is positive abount Aranns service without directly mentioning Ryanair? First the weekend papers carry a big 14.99 ad from Ryan for Dublin to Cork, then today the Indo has a "Fly Ryanair instead of Aer Arann" ad, comparing ryans "9.99" fare with Aranns 25euro fare. Nobody seems to have told their pricing people - 14.99 is still the lowest I can find, so a bit of a knee jerk there. Then Ryanair present "7 reasons to fly Ryanair not Arann". Some are obvious - jet v prop, reliability etc, but they claim first and last flights in each direction (wrong - Arann have both at the moment and stay last out of Dublin when the schedules change for the summer), Ryanair also push "online check-in & priority boarding available" - they fail to say that they charge for this whilst Arann now offer free online checking and have been doing pre-allocated seating for years. Finally they say "Now 5 flights per day" - not true until the end of March. Pickey, I know, but they really must have struggled with the words for this ad.

The smart money is on Ryanair expecting Arann to have gone by now. I reckon five 180 seaters each way per day depends on killing Arann first. In reaction to Ryanairs fifth, Arann seem to have done some rescheduling to improve their early evening departures but otherwise seem to be plodding on as before.

Good on ya!

[brian_dromey]

Believe it or not there are situations where FR are more expensive than RE, and the benifits of a jet on such a short sector are doubtful. 5 daily to DUB on a 189 seater is utter madness.

FR must be bleeding serious cash on the route. RE are, as you say, plodding along just fine, offering great service and are actually committed to teh ORK-DUB route. FR would have been much better off doing 3x daily on DUB and 2/3x daily on LGW.

As far as I am concerned FR dont give a damn about ORK, only keeping it free of otehr carriers. I HATE, HATE, HATE FR. When will they gie up this madness on the DUB route?

Brian.

[aidanf]

On a Cork v Shannon 'Ryanair' note, meself and the family have to regularly travel to the UK. Most of the time we've been forced to go ex-Shannon as it can represent a saving of Euro 300+, but after doing in again last Saturday I've taken the decision that this was the last time. Shannon has truly gone to the dogs .... the place was absolutely filthy in the main departures holding area. Now, I'm a fairly filthy fecker meself, but this place was really crawling. Furthermore the screens were saying to 'wait in lounge' while our flight was actually boarding!! It was only by pure chance we realised that the screens were wrong - how hard is it to get this right! From here on we'll be using Aer Arann - few more quid, but at least it's from Cork.

[tashkurgan]

As a fairly regular traveller on the Cork Dublin route from the 80s I can safely state that the RE product on the route is fairly basic and given a choice of a 737-800 or an ATR-42/72 I will take the FR 737-800 everytime. And most business travellers I have met who experienced a winter approach and landing in an ATR will agree with me.

[Bremer]

Hi,
New to this but long time reader. I live in Bremen but come from Cork. Can any of you confirm rumours that are going around here that Ryanair are about to announce a route from Cork to Bremen?

[Angry Rebel]

Bremen

I highly doubt it.

See numerous previous comments regarding Ryanairs lack of meaningful commitment to Cork.

[Tom the Tenor]

Interesting little rumor all right. A Bremen-Cork would have a few things in it's favour. Such a route could be operated from either the Bremen base or from Cork if more aircraft were despateched to us in any proposed expansion. This gives more flexibility to begin with and I guess that Bremen is far enough away from both Hahn and Weeze/NRN not to compromise Ryanair's Shannon operations.

Might be a good one to Bremen at around 3 a week? How many of yez remember reading the name of Bremen in old medium and long wave radios. There is a certain sort of rightness about it but let us believe it when we see it.

Hmm, let's see.

[Charlie Roy]

I guess that Bremen is far enough away from both Hahn and Weeze/NRN not to compromise Ryanair's Shannon operations

And also FR are axing Shannon to Hahn, but I still cannot imagine a ORK - BRE service ever seeing the light of day.

[johnrizzo2000]

''I know there is a lot of competition in Dublin; 2 or 3 carriers for a lot of routes but you see the only competition in Cork is in the UK. Are you telling me Aer Lingus have expansion plans to Europe from Cork, where they have enough flights too by the way? What Cork needs now are more carriers like I mentioned e.g. Lufthansa, SAS, Air France and perhaps Alitalia and not two carriers like Aer Shamrock and TaxiAir. But an important thing for Cork now is to put in the four airbridges. Demand and potential for a lot of new routes from Cork to Europe is there, but the marketing department have to go out and secure it. If it is true that Cork Airport are in serious negotiations with at least 2 or 3 of the major American carriers to New York JFK and Boston then that’s fantastic news and that is exactly what Cork needs – I hope it is Delta and either American or United Airlines they are negotiating with and Cork would also need flights to Philadelphia 2 or 3 times a weeks for the summer and also Chicago for 4 flights a week but that’s for another day. Delta and American/United first to New York and Boston would be fantastic perhaps with a 767 and 757''


I highly doubt UA is considering service to ORK. I'd say the most likely US airline's for service to ORK would be DL and CO. CO would be a great addition to ORK, due to the strenght of their EWR operations, but I'd say its a good while off. PHL and ORD are not going to happen ex ORK, as not many US carriers are interested in 3/4 weekly seasonal flights. Look for JFK or EWR, and BOS, although BOS is a very long shot!! If GSM proves a success ex Knock, we may see ORK-JFK/EWR service, but not for the forseeable future.

[ryan2000]

New routes

Cork hasn't secured any new flights for 2007 apart from the Central Wings Warsaw service and some additional flights to other Polish Cities. These are almost certainly due to demand from Polish migrant workers.
Talk of Alitalia, SAS and Lufthansa appearing on the aproach to 17/35 is simply fantasy.
These legacy carriers are only interested in flying to Dublin and will almost certainly not even consider Cork once they hear that it is an Aerlingus and Ryanair base.
Why not entice EI and FR to base additional aircraft there, that's a far more likely prospect.

[jbsharpe]

Cork Airport today

I know the topic of feeling let-down by the design of the new terminal has been thrashed to death, but after flying in today from Birmingham, I feel like a mild rant...

I flew over with the missus yesterday for the United Champions League game, the lunchtime EI flight to BHX - airbridge in operation, which was nice! Escalator down from the gate to the airbridge too, so all good...

However today was a different story. This time we were flying WW. (In an aside, the approach was blustery enough, only emerging from the clouds just after passing CIT on approach to 17, but the touchdown was very smooth in fairness!)

We reached the stand in fairly heavy rain. They opened the front door, but since I was in the back row, I was hoping for the rear door also... Sure enough, along trundled a stairs and the stewardess opened up. However no movement... word filtered back that while the stairs was there, there was no despatcher on hand so she couldn't let us disembark. Can't have helped her 25 minute turnaround! "They're probably couldn't be arsed stand out in the rain!" muttered the stewardess somewhat bitterly.

We all piled out the front door and got to the barbaric tower - and sure enough there were two fluorescent-jacket-wearing despatchers standing out of the rain. The stairs were absolutely soaking and very slippy. All in all, a highly unsatisfactory arrival. Whatever about the inertia of the staff, the design is just ridiculous.

As I said at the outset, I realise this has been discussed at length, but I felt the need to rant...

JBS

[MarkD]

I think there is a lot of speculation about TA ex ORK that originates from two sources:

1. People's imagination - which of course would end half the threads on pprune if it was a disqualifier
2. Cork calling around airlines who are too polite not to simply say "are you kidding? We heard about Ryan International/Slatterys you know - and oil is still $50-60 a barrel." and slam down the phone.

Now god knows I'd love to see more direct routes home but if ORK want to get TA ex ORK they should be talking to flyglobespan about something out of Cardiff or Bristol in a similar vein to NOCs services. They might see something happen a lot quicker than a UA 757 on ORK's ramp.