Ryanair at Shannon?
 

Since Ryanair established their base here in Shannon, I have already flown a number of times at very low prices, both on business and for pleasure to such places as East Midlands, Liverpool and Frankfurt. However, loads were very, very low on all the flights that I have done to those cities.
The London route seems to be attracting more passengers, although EZY is offering pretty competitive fares at the moment as well.
I know they have just started the base, but the overall performance looks really bad. A friend, who is ground handler, told me that loads are quite low.

Is this 'expected' or is Shannon really too small to have a base (bearing in mind that it has been tried before...).

Pete

Apparently Ryanair are less than happy with at least 4 of the routes from Shannon and news of their dropping of these routes is expected in the not too distant future. As for the viability of Shannon as a base ~ it is certainly in doubt that Shannon could support the loads that Ryanair want, even taking the "deal" that they got from SNN into account.

Ryanair have been having talks with Cork and are very keen to transfer some of the SNN aircraft to Cork and have a bigger presence there as they see that some of the routes would be supported a lot more with the greater population from Cork. They are holding out for the same kind of deal that they got in SNN. Whether they get it is another story.

Does anyone know which routes are performing worst?

Of course if Ryanair can't manage to make Shannon viable, EUjet will step into the breach and waste another sack full of cash discovering that they don't have a magic wand.

Hello,

Although Cork arguably has a better catchment population than Shannon, it probably falls short of what an airline should consider reasonable to set up a base. I can't believe Ryanair chose Shannon in the first place!
Have heard the rumours about absolutely underperforming routes as well, which demonstrates that even Ryanair cannot make all routes work... Expect some Shannon route cuts after the peak summer season (or even earlier).

J

Winter timetable shows the Shannon-Luton flight using a Luton airframe and not one from Ireland.

Prices from Luton to Shannon are SO cheap, Mr, Mrs and Busterette are flying there for under fifty quid return inclusive!

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Jan the Man- Cork county has a population of 447,829
of which 123,062 are in Cork City and 324,767 are in Cork County.

compare this with Bristol 420k, Leeds 443k, Liverpool 469k.

I think ORK is big enough for a base.

Lowfaresbuster:

I don't think you're comparing apples with apples.
Unless I'm mistaken, the UK numbers you quote are city populations only, which frankly are pretty meaningless - what's much more important is the number of people within say 60 or 90 minutes journey time of the airport, irrespective of whether they're living inside a given city boundary.

I don't have detailed catchment numbers for all the airports you've cited, but - to take BRS as an example - Avon, Gloucestershire and North Somerset (a reasonable catchment for BRS, I think) is about 1.5 m people I believe. Hopefully a knowledgeable soul like Merchant Venturer can help us out.

I appreciate the (well-founded) desire to see more services out of ORK, but creative accounting with the catchment numbers to overegg the case doesn't really serve anyone.

C.

Looking at the winter timetables there are currently no flights showing for:

NRN
HHN
GRO
BGY


LPL - Op by LPL aircraft
LTN - Op by LTN aircraft
STN - one of the 4 rotations op by STN aircraft

I've never seen any catchment area figures for Irish Airports, so I cam up with some crude ones of my own based on where I thought you could drive to in a certain timeframe and the population of various electoral districts.

The figures I got were

Cork
Within 1/2 hour: 310,000
Within 1 hour: 500,000
Within 2 hours: 1,030,000

Shannon
Within 1/2 hour: 180,000
Within 1 hour: 410,000
Within 2 hours: 960,000

So, the differences aren't that big between the two airports, although Cork has a lot more people who live very locally.

Obviously, there is a huge overlap of people who live within 2 hours of both airports.

Winter timetable @ SNN
 

@ egnxema:

NRN: days 1357 only (reduced from daily)
HHN: days 1356 only (increased from 1x weekly)
GRO: days 1357 only (no change)
BGY: days 1357 only (no change)

CRL: days 2467 only (reduced from daily)
LGW: 2x daily (increased from daily)

There is room for a new route on days 246 (when the aircraft isn't going to NRN) and there also seems to be a short spare slot between the two LGW rotations... just long enough for a hop over to DUB ?

Cyrano

A couple of years after the 2001 Census Bristol's population was officially adjusted upwards to approximately 420,000 but, as you say, this is meaningless. Unlike many UK cities its municipal boundaries have not been extended for over forty years, hence the true 'city' population is about 700,000. (much of the extra is contained in the unitary authority of South Gloucestershire to the north and east, a substantial 'city' in its own right, and you can't see the join between it and Bristol)

Add in most of the rest of the former county of Avon (which no longer exists), the northern part of the historic county of Somerset plus parts of west Wiltshire and you do have well over a million living within twenty miles of BRS.

The government White Paper says that 7.3 million people live within a 2-hour drive of BRS but even that is slightly misleading because some of those live near other airports as well.

This is not directly related to Shannon but I was asked and it does perhaps give an indication to SNN's and ORK's positions in terms of catchments.

There are similar problems with city definitions in Ireland. In 2002, the population of the Cork Urban Area was 186,239 (CSO figures), yet the population of the city council area was 123,062.

Limerick Urban Area had a population of 86,998, while the population of the city council area was 54,023.

A look at the figures suggests Galway has surpassed Limerick as Ireland's 3rd largest city with a population of 65,832. However, Galway's boundaries pretty much fit the city and it has an overall population of 66,163.

Thanks for the "guest expert" input, MV - much appreciated. :ok:

This was taken from the Irish Independent in an article about Dublin, looks like FR are still expanding there.

'Separately, Ryanair is also increasing capacity at Shannon, Cork, Knock and Derry airports. Tomorrow, the airline will announce plans to add two new routes out of Shannon: one is expected to be to a location in western France, the other to southern England'.

Regarding city boundaries...same applies to Cork. They haven't been changed in decades. The Greater Cork area including its suburbs and commuter towns is not far off 500,000 people.

Don't know much about the relative size of the catchment areas - but I've often wondered about the possibility of routes from the West of Ireland (Shannon, Galway or Knock) to the West/South west of England or Wales - there was a piece on another thread about Air Wales having a Galway/Cardiff flight on their booking machine.

I know that Cork - Bristol and Plymouth have both worked before and wondered if Ryanair were thinking about having a go at Bristol, Cardiff or Bournemouth ex Shannon. I wonder if the rugby fraternity in Limerick would make us of the first two ?

Unfortunately for Shannon, loads from outside the UK and the main european cities are probably more dependent on the inbound passengers (i.e. European mainland tourists) than on the people of the mid-west deciding to take a cheapo trip to Germany.

yes -= FR have announced new flts from SNN to BRS and Nantes. EZY were looking at both of these routes ex ORK or SNN so I guess this closes the door somewaht for them.

Sure - the loads and yield are crap out of SNN for FR on many flts but when SNN is paying you for every passenger - well how bad can it be. FR have also renegotiated their deal to an even better level at SNN this week.

THURSDAY 07/07/2005 08:25:43
Ryanair expected to announce expansion at Shannon

Low fares airline Ryanair is expected to announce an expansion of it's services from Shannon Airport at a news conference later this morning.


Ryanair boss, Michael O` Leary will announce details of the expansion along with Pat Shanahan of the Shannon Airport Authority.

Today`s news conference will take place at Shannon Airport and speculation is continuing as to which routes will be opened up by Ryanair.

It`s already been reported that at least two new routes will be unveiled, one to Southern England and one to Western France although this has yet to be confirmed.


Last November Ryanair announced it was to make Shannon a major European hub and the new services it rolled out in May have been a major sucess.

Meanwhile, Ryanair will also announce expansions at Cork, Knock and Derry Airports today.

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Micheal O'Leary, Shannon Airport marketing manager! FR should do well enough on both routes especially Nantes and if at the same time they are securing an even better deal from snn, well what you can say! A job well done. No flies on the Ryanair pooh!