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Old 25th Oct 2019, 23:09
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Originally Posted by CCR
Glad to hear that Cork will have good connectivity with 3 major European hubs, LHR, AMS and CDG with the recent Air France announcement.
Still a little surprised that Stobart hasn't come back on the Dublin route though.
The main focus for the DAA in Cork should be to get at least one major carrier on transatlantic routes from 2020 onwards.
All the carriers flying between the USA and Shannon operate the 757, an aircraft perfect for Cork's short 7,000ft runway.
The DAA should encourage Aer Lingus to relocate their 757 US operations from Shannon to Cork or at least one of the US carriers, United, Delta or American to relocate their US services to Cork where they could operate a year round 757 services instead of just seasonal services to Shannon and with zero competition too!
The DUB/ORK route had been re-evaluated by Stobart a few years ago.
I think the challenge is slots are like hens teeth in the early morning when this need to have a landing at DUB.
There well be far more attractive routes than ORK, equally something else more attractive night need to be forsaken ex ORK unless an extra unit can't on.

When the new runway comes on stream it could get a look in. A mix of transfer pax and business pax on point to point, totally feasible.

AF's success on ORK-CDG-USA could determine a lot, if they eat into Aer Lingus's pax numbers to US, then things could change. I don't think Aer Lingus will down the fight and I can't see AF staying long on double daily.. I'll give it one season...
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Old 25th Oct 2019, 23:31
  #222 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by snn20
No doubt they have, but airlines go where the demand is, and Shannon has an established TATL market.
Shannon has an established seasonal TATL market but Cork has the population for year round services to North America.
That's the head scratcher...why not just 1 of the 5 airlines flying from Shannon to North America doesn't move to Cork.
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Old 26th Oct 2019, 19:34
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Why not switch services SNN-ORK?

1. U.S. Preclearance
2. Established year-round market at Shannon until carriers concentrated on Dublin
3. Shannon's location meets market demand for western seaboard, unlike Cork

Last edited by gaelgeoir; 26th Oct 2019 at 20:44.
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Old 27th Oct 2019, 11:14
  #224 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by gaelgeoir
1. U.S. Preclearance
2. Established year-round market at Shannon until carriers concentrated on Dublin
3. Shannon's location meets market demand for western seaboard, unlike Cork
Carriers were forced to land in Shannon until the Stopover was abolished.
Shannon doesn't have the population for year round services. It just has seasonal transatlantic services.
Cork has circa 500,000 population city and county.
Shannon has 5 carriers to North America with 3 carriers competing on the New York routes with the 757, Aer Lingus, United and Delta.
Just one of those carriers switching their New York flights to Cork would be quite successful.
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Old 28th Oct 2019, 00:03
  #225 (permalink)  
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Catchment is a very vague concept. If you live in Charleville or Kilfinane, you’d probably be happy with either airport and base choice on price and timetable.

In practice we know that people from Cork, Limerick and Galway will go to Dublin for direct flights rather than using a connection from their local airport. (Frequently a false economy on both cost and time, but that’s a different discussion).

For me, there are two major reasons for TA carriers using Shannon. One is pre-clearance. This makes things a lot easier for airlines. Passengers arriving in the US as domestic is great for easy connections. The other reason is the mind-share that Shannon has among Irish Americans. Many don’t even realise there are airports beyond Dublin and Shannon.

Because of the pre-clearance, if Cork was to pursue an airline at Shannon, Air Canada makes the most sense.
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Old 29th Oct 2019, 12:27
  #226 (permalink)  
 
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I don't think pre-clearence is a huge impediment to operations at Cork. The reality is that the runway is challenging, the market relatively untested and there are two established airports with service to the East Cost within ~2 hours drive. The US relines are clearly happy with the performance of their SNN operations, or they would have pulled out. Giving up a known market for an untested one, even with a shed-load of marketing support is a tough sell. If Cork manages to keep a high profile with US travel journalists, or managed to get a large HBO/Netflix-style production then things could change and act as an attraction to aid the support of an East Cost route. Dubrovnik, New Zealand and Iceland are two locations where this has happened recently.
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Old 27th Nov 2019, 09:04
  #227 (permalink)  
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KLM to start 1x daily to AMS from March 30th.

Aer Lingus's messing with the route must have finally caused them to lose patience.

That will mean quite the Skyteam presence next summer.

KL1087AMSORK 123456 E90 100 15:50 16:4030 Mar - 3 Jul & 31 Aug - 24 Oct
KL1088ORKAMS 123456 E90 100 17:10 20:0030 Mar - 3 Jul & 31 Aug - 24 Oct
KL1087AMSORK 7 E75 88 15:50 16:405 Apr - 28 Jun & 6 Sep - 18 Oct
KL1088ORKAMS 7 E75 88 17:10 20:005 Apr - 28 Jun & 6 Sep - 18 Oct
KL1085AMSORK 12345_7 E75 88 12:00 12:505 Jul - 30 Aug
KL1086ORKAMS 12345_7 E75 88 13:20 16:055 Jul - 30 Aug
KL1087AMSORK 6 E75 88 16:05 16:555 Jul - 30 Aug
KL1088ORKAMS 6 E75 88 17:35 20:205 Jul - 30 Aug

Last edited by 840; 27th Nov 2019 at 14:50. Reason: Add timetable
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Old 29th Nov 2019, 19:09
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Timings are a bit all over the place, but mainly afternoon / early evening services, which would seem to complement the Aer Lingus service.
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Old 30th Nov 2019, 08:00
  #229 (permalink)  
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The code share on the Aer Lingus flight remains, at least until the end of the summer season.

As we all know on this thread Aer Lingus have been completely messing around with the evening rotation in summer because they can make more money flying to Malaga, Alicante etc. KLM will have a pretty good idea how many long-haul transfers that is costing them and whether it’s worth a flight whose timings tie up nicely with long-haul arrivals into Amsterdam, but whose return only suits a handful of European destinations for transfer.

This is probably the least speculative launch of a route by an airline at Cork that I can remember.

if the codeshare stays around for the Winter, it’s questionable if it will operate in the Winter as the better Aer Lingus evening rotations will cover pretty much all connecting desires.
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Old 4th Dec 2019, 21:02
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I marvel at the comments on this thread. Aer Lingus have consistently supported Cork Airport. Comments like Aer Lingus messing around with the AMS schedule, seriously! Get a grip, Aer Lingus is a commercial entity, it needs to fly it's aircraft as prudently as possible to deliver a suitable return. KLM will be exactly the same.

Adding KLM at Cork or indeed Air France for CDG will only serve to erode the level of business that Aer Lingus has whether that be directly to CDG or AMS or indeed to any point in the world via LHR etc. My opinion is that this will lead to an eventual reduction by Aer Lingus at the airport.

We'll see what happens soon no doubt.

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Old 5th Dec 2019, 08:53
  #231 (permalink)  
 
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My expectation and hope is that EI would continue to complete with AF and KL. I think EI would generally be preferred ex Ireland and the EI headline fares are generally a bit more attractive than AF or KL. EI will clearly have lower costs on their A320 fleet Vs the 70 seaters operated on most of the AF and KL routes.

I think what most posters meant is that EI’s primary goal is not to feed AF and KL hubs and that those airlines will design a schedule to suit their larger network needs.

What’s interesting is that AMS is 100% slot restricted. KL had to drop frequencies on other routes to launch Cork. I don’t think that’s ever happened before, to my recollection.
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Old 5th Dec 2019, 10:04
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Originally Posted by brian_dromey
My expectation and hope is that EI would continue to complete with AF and KL. I think EI would generally be preferred ex Ireland and the EI headline fares are generally a bit more attractive than AF or KL. EI will clearly have lower costs on their A320 fleet Vs the 70 seaters operated on most of the AF and KL routes.

I think what most posters meant is that EI’s primary goal is not to feed AF and KL hubs and that those airlines will design a schedule to suit their larger network needs.

What’s interesting is that AMS is 100% slot restricted. KL had to drop frequencies on other routes to launch Cork. I don’t think that’s ever happened before, to my recollection.
Which goes to show KL are chasing more than people going to Amsterdam for the weekend.
There is always a market for people who are prepared to change or layover somewhere rather than travel to DUB or wherever. And that works in both directions.
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Old 5th Dec 2019, 10:21
  #233 (permalink)  
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@EI-BUD AMS was a flight that operated twice daily during the worst of the post-2007 recessions. It still operates more frequently in Winter than in Summer. A conspiracy theorist would put the reduction down to IAG trying to avoid connecting pax using AMS; a more reasonable explanation is that there is more money flying to Malaga or Faro in the summer months. There's really no other way to describe what has happened with the schedule in recent years other than messing around with it. Considering it's the second most business pax heavy route at Cork and accommodates a lot of frequent flyers, it could be seen as short-sighted.

While I fully accept that Aer Lingus don't have the flexibility that Ryanair do to create capacity with aircraft based in remote airports, the fact is that beyond sweating the based aircraft more and more, there has been no real EI expansion at Cork for a long time. At this point those aircraft have no more to give in the summer schedule. The appearance of Air France/KLM and to an extent Swiss at the airport speaks of a connecting passenger market that was being inadequately served. If the gamble was that everyone would use an Aer Lingus flight to Heathrow or a bus to Dublin for an Aer Lingus flight from there, it would seem to have gone wrong.
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Old 5th Dec 2019, 10:43
  #234 (permalink)  
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@brian_dromey The KLM group will have some slots in AMS next year. I believe Transavia are moving some leisure route capacity out of Schiphol. Also some flights on the AMS-BRU route are being shifted to be operated by a train with a codeshare (I guess this makes sense when the train only takes 90 mins). However, there's also the issue of aircraft and only the switching of BRU to rail will free up one of those.
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Old 5th Dec 2019, 11:31
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Originally Posted by 840
@EI-BUD AMS was a flight that operated twice daily during the worst of the post-2007 recessions. It still operates more frequently in Winter than in Summer. A conspiracy theorist would put the reduction down to IAG trying to avoid connecting pax using AMS; a more reasonable explanation is that there is more money flying to Malaga or Faro in the summer months. There's really no other way to describe what has happened with the schedule in recent years other than messing around with it. Considering it's the second most business pax heavy route at Cork and accommodates a lot of frequent flyers, it could be seen as short-sighted.

While I fully accept that Aer Lingus don't have the flexibility that Ryanair do to create capacity with aircraft based in remote airports, the fact is that beyond sweating the based aircraft more and more, there has been no real EI expansion at Cork for a long time. At this point those aircraft have no more to give in the summer schedule. The appearance of Air France/KLM and to an extent Swiss at the airport speaks of a connecting passenger market that was being inadequately served. If the gamble was that everyone would use an Aer Lingus flight to Heathrow or a bus to Dublin for an Aer Lingus flight from there, it would seem to have gone wrong.
840, I wouldn't agree with conspiracy theorists and I'm aware of the history of the route, again my point is about deploying the aircraft as commercially as possible, recessionary environment the same theory applies.

If Aer Lingus were to expand at Cork on the broadest terms they'd need an additional based unit. I rather see 4 units fly at a sustainable return rather than 5 and poor returns. I just hope there are no reductions as a consequence of KL arriving. Can you imagine if EI moved AMS to daily, that would be sweet for business travellers... let's hope that's not the case that materialises.


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Old 5th Dec 2019, 12:17
  #236 (permalink)  
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I don't think there's a chance of Aer Lingus going down to daily. At it's busiest, the route handled a couple of hundred shy of 180K per year. Last year it was 155K driven by capacity cuts.

The KLM service is only introducing 46K new seats, so it's largely going back to where it came from.

Even if it did go to one Aer Lingus in the morning and one KLM in the evening, A 15:50 departure ex Amsterdam isn't exactly that terrible for someone traveling from Cork on business. Timings are a bit more problematic in the opposite direction, but the bulk of the business traffic is ex Cork.

As I said, none of those summer rotations were unprofitable (and I have seen the figures, although admittedly pre-2012). It was more that there was greater profit to be made elsewhere and to an extent because the 21:30 arrival represented poor aircraft usage compared to what Aer Lingus look for now. That's too late to send the aircraft out again, but represents 3 hours of non-used time during the day.

Also as I said, KLM know exactly how much connecting revenue they were losing out on as a result of the evening rotation not being there. They have precise figures from a few years ago and should Aer Lingus respond by dropping frequency, I have little doubt that those figures would justify an increase in frequency for them.

The risk that Aer Lingus are running in Cork now is that if they become just London + Leisure they leave themselves very exposed to Ryanair who have greater flexibility and the ability to undercut them everywhere.
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Old 5th Dec 2019, 17:37
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Forgetting that AF schedule will take some of the traffic from EI AMS schedule. Its unfortunate passengers could well end up suffering CDG over AMS as a hub long term if for example EI exited AMS. KL may not be in a position to expand to x2 daily.

The economics of 3 aircraft in winter may not stack up. 1 for LHR, 1 for x10-12 AMS and x7 CDG and 1 for C Islands, LIS, AGP with plenty of gaps.

So will they consolidate to x2?

Im impressed Cork has managed to get both AF/KLM. Those in Co. Clare have little chance of securing a mainland hub.
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Old 9th Dec 2019, 09:07
  #238 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by EI-EIDW
Forgetting that AF schedule will take some of the traffic from EI AMS schedule. Its unfortunate passengers could well end up suffering CDG over AMS as a hub long term if for example EI exited AMS. KL may not be in a position to expand to x2 daily.


KLM's big block on expansion at AMS is the cap on movements at Schiphol.However, expect to see Transavia move more and more leisure flights out of the airport. Most likely alternative is Lelystad, which would start to become Luton to Schiphol's Heathrow. In many ways Rotterdam would be a better option than Lelystad, being at the heart of the most densely populated part of The Netherlands, but restrictions there are quite onorous considering the low level of traffic at the airport.

Without that block, I would be unsurprised to see KLM increase to multiple times daily to Cork, even with the Aer Lingus presence.

Regarding the Winter, nothing has been announced yet and as what KLM really want are connecting passengers, if Aer Lingus offer EI844/845 four or five days a week, in particular on Thursday and Friday, there's a very high chance they won't operate. The cost wouldn' tbe worth the benefit.

In terms of what the Air France schedule will hit, the biggest impact will surely be on Heathrow. That accounts for almost 80% of connecting traffic in Cork at the moment. If Air France are successful, it's not at all inconceivable that Heathrow would drop to 3x daily, freeing up a valuable slot there for other use.
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Old 11th Dec 2019, 08:45
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Its unfortunate passengers could well end up suffering CDG over AMS as a hub long term if for example EI exited AMS.
I believe whether people book via KLM or Air France they could find themselves flying to Los Angeles via Amsterdam, and back via CDG for example....
The KLM and AF schedules need to be seen as one combined schedule in terms of long haul connections.
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Old 11th Dec 2019, 14:02
  #240 (permalink)  
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Anyway for some route news that probably won't generate as much discussion, Ryanair are to operate to Zadar twice weekly (Wed & Sun) next summer. Based on the timings, it will either be a Zadar-based aircraft or flying a W, so no cuts to existing services required to accommodate it. More likely a Zadar-based aircraft as it arrives there very late.

Zadar is 350km from Dubrovnik, so it's not likely to have any major negative impact on Aer Lingus route there, other than among those who would consider Croatia for a holiday destination, but aren't too pushed about where.
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