CORK - 5

[Copenhagen]

The food court is mostly used by staff on tea and Coffee breaks and is almost deserted in the afternoon and evening.

Most food courts are deserted in the afternoon. Perhaps what they need to do is similar to what was done in Dublin, and make the food court 50% airside.

Lowering the charges in the short term car park would also encourage people to spend.

€1 spent in a car park goes directly into the pockets of the airport.

€1 spent in a coffee shop - maybe only 5c to 10c goes into the pockets of the airport.

The deliberate decision to discourage meeters and greeters to visit the airport by not including a viewing area

Ryan, I doubt that anyone took a deliberate decision to discourage meeters and greeters.

The era of meeters and greeters in Ireland has long gone. The last time I was in Shannon I poped up to the viewing gallery, and spent 30 minutes up there on a phone conversation, and I was the only person using the viewing gallery at the time - this was a weekend summer morning, and the airport was, for once, 'busy'.

cork, it lost €14 million in 2011

Thats over €10 per departing passenger.

I think it will also depend how aggressive the DAA would want to be in using Cork to compete with Shannon once it leaves the DAA group. Look at London, LGW has been very aggressively marketed and does seem to be hurting STN, but also LHR to a lesser extent. It will be interesting to see how the DAA will compete with SNN.

The DAA is still owned by the same person that owns Shannon, so you may find that DAA is forced by its shareholder to go easy on the west coast. I'm not sure if there is much more to be gained from Shannon in Cork. The Shannon European market is basically gone, and the UK routes are quite well established, usually by the same carrier operating the routes in Cork. Competition works both ways, so expect SNN to push hard for Wizz for example.

Airports need to be aggressive with ancillary revenue. In my opinion there is significant room for growth of Duty Free and retail spend at ORK.

Brian - thats a very easy sentance to say,

but the reality of a recession means that people don't spend.

Starbucks and Subway are gone, the food court closes early

Means too many Catering options.

as does duty free

Means that its not profitable to keep it open. More space = more staff = more construction costs.

Manchester terminal 1 is a great example of airport retail, it is a bit of a labyrnth to get through, but the environment is nice and the products are really well merchandised

You are comparing a major terminal airport with significant traffic to a regional airport with just over 1m departing passengers.

Dublin T2 is also better than ORK in this respect

Someone told me that the DAA are global airport retailers, and retailing in T2 is superb.

In the current enviornment airlines do not want to pay their way.

In the current environment, nobody wants to pay their way.

I believe that the airport will have to look at other revenue streams. In retailing, people would have to spend an extra €100 each in shops and dutyfree to make up the short fall.

[ryan2000]

Cork was unique in that it retained large numbers of meeters and greeters until the old terminal closed in 2006. This was in part due the Airport Manager from 1994 to 1998 the late Barry Roche. Barry believed in humanising airports and had a viewing gallery constructed in the early 1990's long after other airports ditched them.

I agree with Copenhagens view that the DAA will most likely be told to go easy on Shannon once it breaks away. Furthermore they'll probably be advised to turn a blind eye to Shannons' attempts to poach Cork's traffic and not dare to attempt to go after any of Shannon's transatlantic business. In some ways we shouldn't worry as Dublin will continue to underwrite Cork's losses until we get a Government that develops an Aviation Policy that's free from political considerations.

[Copenhagen]

A loss making business, even in underwritten, is a bad place to be, because the entire focus is on turning around those losses at the expense of things like marketing and community relations.

[brian_dromey]

My point is that should the airport go looking, there are places where more money could be earned. I agree that retail isn't the ONLY answer, but can contribute more than it does at present. Neither was I saying that Cork could, or should, have food/retail operations on the scale of Manchester, but the execution of the concept at T1 is probably the best I've seen anywhere, the environment is more akin to an upmarket department store rather than a run of the mill duty free stand. The products are attractively merchandised and displayed - they are also keenly priced, versus high street, from what I have seen. although economic times are hard, encouraging people through security as early as possible can only help to encourage spend. There is a science behind store layout,merchandising, advertising and so on, none of which is apparent at ORK.

The food options airside are poor and the sports bar isnt a particularly great place to spend time, I prefer Red's bar landslide. I know it's easy to say but I do feel that the layout at departures is wrong and should be addressed to promote more spend at the airport, like many other airports have done. As has been pointed out SNN may, or may not be aggressive and ORK may, or may not, be willing/able to respond. Every advantage will help and ORK needs to do everything possible to pay its own way, get costs down and revenue up, while offering airlines attractive enticements to Cork. It's a tough ask.

[840]

Looking at the annual report, income from the Cork Airport Business Park is treated in a separate section from Cork Airport related income.

It's hard to say how much was received as all associated subsidiaries are treated as a unit in the figures. The 8 associated subsidiaries together provided a dividend of €23 million.

[francis omahony]

Francis OMahony

WIZZ winter CUTBACKS

Katowice down from 4 flights weekly to 2
Poznan down from 2 to 1
WROCLAW down from 2 to 1

[en2r]

WIZZ CUTBACKS

Katowice down from 4 flights weekly to 2
Poznan down from 2 to 1
WROCLAW down from 2 to 1

Do Wizz not always reduce frequency way down for the Winter? Think there were similar frequencies last winter.

[ryan2000]

I think Wizzairs' schedule is broadly in line with last year although a post elsewhere on Pprune presents it as a cutback. I can't understand why such a large food court was put land side at Cork at a time when similar facilities all over Europe and abroad were being switched to airside. I'm told it'd cost at least 1 million euro to relocate it at this stage. There is also a huge waste of space in the Check in area. 30 desks and seldom more than 3 occupied.

[Jack1985]

WIZZ winter CUTBACKS

Rubbish statement, Wizz Air will actually operate more flights per week into Cork this winter then last year.

both Starbucks and Subway are gone

Starbucks has already been replaced by Cork Coffee Roasters which has been open since late last November. Going by recent discussions at the CAA the Subway void could be filled fairly quickly by a fast-food chain. As for the Cork Food Market moving, I can't see this happening anytime soon although it makes complete sense for it to be only available after security, improvements for the Loop which include a new layout and extra spending opportunities are to be announced soon.

[840]

The check in desks are definitely the worst part of the airport design. They are from an era before online check in and the number there would now not be needed, even if the airport expanded to 7 million passengers per year.

I'm not sure that there's much else that can be done with the area as there is not really any great need for more landside retail or services.

[Jack1985]

Ryanair resumes Cork to Nottingham/East Midlands route

Ryanair are to resume flights between Cork and Nottingham/East Midlands from 1st September being announced shortly. The route was previously operated between December 2007 and October 2008.

First press release available now Tourism Ireland welcomes new Ryanair Cork-East Midlands route » Inside Ireland

[Mlinnie]

Great news ! any idea on the frequency though ?

[dublinaviator]

3x weekly - Ryanair announces new route from Cork | BreakingNews.ie

[PPRuNeUser0176]

A/C 2 - A320:

EI840 ORK-AMS 0610/0855 MTWTFSS 1hrs 45mins
EI841 AMS-ORK 0940/1030 MTWTFSS 1hrs 50mins

EI822 ORK-CDG 1110/1350 MTWTFSS 1hrs 40mins*
EI823 CDG-ORK 1435/1520 MTWTFSS 1hrs 45mins*

EI846 ORK-BRU 1630/1905 M-W-F-S 1hrs 35mins
EI847 BRU-ORK 1945/2025 M-W-F-S 1hrs 40mins

EI882 ORK-AGP 1630/2010 -T-T--- 2hrs 40mins
EI883 AGP-ORK 2050/2240 -T-T--- 2hrs 50mins

EIXXX ORK-XXX XXXX/XXXX -----S- Xhrs XXmins**
EIXXX XXX-ORK XXXX/XXXX -----S- Xhrs XXmins**

AMS filled the gap

[840]

Is the Ryanair route with an East Midlands based aircraft or is something being dropped?

[Jack1985]

Is the Ryanair route with an East Midlands based aircraft or is something being dropped?

No routes dropped or cut. Operated by Cork A/C on Sat and by an East Midlands A/C on Tues/Thurs.

Was wondering why EI-REH was parked up for a few days Accident: Aer Arann AT72 at Cork on May 13th 2012, hard landing

[Cabincrewifly]

Looks like its Kylemore Cafe that are setting up in the old Subway unit.

Aer Lingus have been using the airbridge a lot recently, all different flights such as NCE LHR AMS

[Jack1985]

Looks like its Kylemore Cafe that are setting up in the old Subway unit.

Were exactly did you hear this?

[Cabincrewifly]

Colleagues at the airport

[brian_dromey]

Wonder if it might be Kylemore's alternative to subway Quiznos. There was one in Merchants Quay for a few years, in the unit which was once Kylemore Bakery, laterally coffee cuisine, empty for an extended period and may still be. Quiznos would seem to fit well, Kylemore would have a lot of overlap with the food court upstairs, I would think.