Based on the Knock precedent there's nothing to prevent an Irish or other E.U. airline operating a scheduled transatlantic service from Cork. In addition, a U.S. or European airline can operate unrestricted transatlantic charters from there. Clearly none yet believes that it's a viable market.

That's what I was thinking. Rather than creating a fuss saying that Knock shouldn't be allowed to do this, people in Cork would be much better off letting Knock make the precedent and using this to justify flights ex-Cork.

agreed, but how long does it have to take for it to occur in cork , and yes cork would be a viable market hands down thats a no brainer :ugh: And whats this about Delta?? I'll believe it when I see it, where is the foundations to this ?

the following is the full text of the reply i received from the Aviation Regulation and International Relations division of the Department of Transport in Dublin.

1 The Flyglobespan flights originate from two destinations in the UK and have been given permission to land and pick up passengers at Ireland West (Knock). The airline is designated under the UK US Air Services Agreement The traffic rights to operate the routes set out in the application are based on the UK US Air Services Agreement and traffic rights have been approved by the US and UK authorities.

The Minister for Transport has granted authorisation under Section 8 of the Air Navigation and Transport Act, 1965 for the operation of air services by FlyGlobespan via Ireland West Airport Knock to and from two points in the UK and US for an initial period of twelve months:

2 As the Ireland US Air Services Agreement is still in force the status of Shannon and Dublin Airports is unchanged

3 On the question of Cork Airport it may be of interest that permission was given some years ago for an Irish carrier to operate direct tranatlantic flights from Cork to designated points (as per the Ireland US Air Services Agreement) in the US. The operator did not proceed with the service. We have no application for transatlantic flights from Cork at present.

Can anyone point us to the actual wording of Section 8 of The Air Navigation and Transport Act, 1965 and what Irish carrier was it that sought rights some years ago to fly routes between Cork and points in America? Lost on me? Translift?

If and it is indeed a big if were Delta Airlines ever to turn up at Cork where would they park if a 767 was used? It would not be the airbridge stand, 9T and that is for sure! It would be a brisk walk down to the sole widebody stand if you are lucky enough to be able bodied! Delta would just love that!

You can just imagine the scene, the geniuses up at Cork plying the guys from Atlanta with loads of Murphys and Heineken over at The Kiln and in a weakness Delta give in and tell Cork that they'll stop off a 767 at Cork at something like twice a week from next year from somewhere like Amsterdam or Brussels on the way to New York only to be told by the Cork crowd that they don't want a 767 and that a 757 will do instead!

Best of luck to everyone at Knock Airport with the fabulous series of flights from flyglobespan to New York and Boston. More than anything Knock has shown up what a farce the whole US - Ireland bilateral actually is, nothing but a nasty, gutless piece of verbal engineering that has given nothing but positive discrimination and comfort to the cute boyos in Shannon at the expense of the rest of the people of Ireland and especially those livining within the catchment areas of Cork and, indeed, Dublin Airports. Let it not be said that I have not ever had some sympathy for Dublin Airport over the thirty years or so! Mind you, the same cannot be said too much in relation to Dublin's regard for Cork Airport?

There are a number of transatlantic carriers looking at Cork.

It appears that Delta were guests of the CAA at last weeks Corporate Dinner at the Travel Fair.
This did not go unnoticed in some quarters but I wouldn't get too excited about it at this stage.

Transatlantic from ORK
 

Received this e-mail from Cork Airport after I enquired abou any t/a routes being started from ORK:

"I can assure you that the Management Team are in regular and frequent contact with existing and potential airline customers to secure even further new routes for Cork Airport.

As you will have seen from recent announcement, Aer Lingus has recently added Madrid, Lanzarote, Prague and Manchester to increase the number of routes being offered by Ireland's flag carrier to 17. Aer Arann has recently added Galway and Leeds Bradford as well as increasing rotations to Dublin while Centralwings has added Warsaw to their two current routes to Poland.

Added to that, the increase in winter sun and winter ski charter flights this season and our passenger business continues to grow an impressive rate of 11% year on year, serving over 3 million passengers in 2006 - an historic landmark year for Cork Airport.



http://www.pprune.org/forums/images/misc/progress.gif

Cork letter
 

The news that Aerlingus has added Madrid, Lanzarote and Prague to their network is about 7 months old and has been repeated ad nauseum in press releases from Cork. Manchester is a bit more recent (3 months old)

No mention in the letter of all the routes that have been lost including CSA, Easyjet,SN Brussells, Loganair and BMI Regional or why Knock has beaten the airport serving the 2nd largest City in the state to transatlantic flights.
The last part of the question is being asked in many quarters this week inside and outside of Cork Airport

NOC is probably a bit more convenient routing wise LPL/GLA-Ireland-US than ORK most days... JER-ORK-US anyone :hmm:

FR incident thread
 

In case anyone didn't spot the fascinating thread concerning the FR Bishopstown low-pass incident..

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=262132

JBS

Have no fear - hard to miss the AAIU report on the FR 737-800 at Cork last June 4th. SOPs and CRM were out the door. Cork Airport is famous enough as it is without ever needing another alarming incident like that to occur again.

Aer Lingus have been having two quiet days recently. The MAD flight did not operate yesterday and the ALC flight did not operate today. Whatever about Madrid this reinforces my opinion that Alicante should be dropped for most of the winter in favour of Valencia which at least has a long weekend attraction more so that ALC. Sure hope EI put a bit more thought into where they might go from Cork from next winter. It would be great to see Munich again even if it was just winter only at about two a week?

Dont know for sure but am wondering are DHL being caught out with the ATP in Cork. Two German Metros arrived last night on freighter duty but am not sure if they were DHL related. It would be good to think that the ATP is too small and that an Electra or 757 revival might be considered?

Of course, I may be all wrong and the Metros had nothing at all to do with DHL!

Cork-Madrid
 

Madrid doesn't seem to be doing very well from Cork. Ryanair's recently introduced Shannon-Madrid route has destroyed any chances the route had of being successful. There really isn't enough demand for two services to Madrid from Munster. I wonder how long FR would take to pull the route if EI pulled Cork-Madrid. I'd guess a few days at the most.

Cork - Berlin
 

Went over to Berlin on one of the old 6euro flights on Thursday and there were 72 on board. Cam back this morning and it looks like the inbound and outbound legs had similar figures. Comfy flight and arrived early. Friendly staff and no doubting that the homeward flight was captained by a Cork man..

Arrived into the chaos that seems to be Cork Airport - the Blue Channel for customs was closed off. All the newly arrived folk from the Canaries decided to hang around just outside the baggage area.

As it becoming a habit I had to visit 4 pay stations in the long term car park as three were out of order. Surely they cold ensure that the damn things work..

As it becoming a habit I had to visit 4 pay stations in the long term car park as three were out of order. Surely they cold ensure that the damn things work..

Similar thing happened to me at SNN recently...except that the machine was working in that it would take your money, but give no change! As I had put in a 20 Euro note, I obviously went to the desk and asked them to retrieve my outstanding amount. The guys there told me to tell the man at the exit booth my story and he would refund me.
Only in Ireland would we have a self service machine and then a staffed exit booth where a guy collects the ticket off you! An automatic and manual at the same time!!
Also, given that no-one was getting change, that 'dodgy machine' was basically rounding up the car park fees to whatever people put into the machine. A nice little money earner at out state airports no doubt.
Serving the people me arse....

I can assure all you intrepid Corkonians that CRK had nothing to do with the GWY introduction....in fact I understand they were quite bemused when the concept was proposed!

RUNAWAYEDGE,

What Is Your Above Comment In Relation To?

Hotel Charlie's email response from the CRK murketing department!

Manchester
 

Looks like from March EI are reducing MAN from 5xWeek to 3x Week, in the process dumping the Sunday flights.

There go my chances of Gold Circle...

Bad news, unless they plan to muck around with the schedules a bit to fit in a daily service, with the other 4 operated by ORK based a/c? I believe there might be room in the schedules to do this?

EI Cork-Manchester
 

Bookings must have been disappointing! They have 5 per week for the Easter period, but then go down to 3 per week. I suppose Monday and Friday being critical days they couldn't really compete with BMI Baby's daily offering. Perhaps FR reintroducing a daily service to Liverpool hurt bookings? I don't think there is space in the schedules of the 4 Cork based aircraft to fit in 4 flights per week. Perhaps they will operate Cork-Birmingham with a Dublin based aircraft and then use the Cork based aircraft to do M-W-F-S on Cork-Manchester. I'd doubt it though.

Aside
 

Just reading about the new control Tower that is to be constructed to the west of the field. Is it really necessary to contruct a new Tower at the present time? It would be a lot more advantageous to extent runways, apron space and upgrage Nav aids. I was just having a look at Google earth there as well, how viable is it to extend 07/25. If this could be done this would be a much better option than 17/35 and install CAT III on it as well. Can they get a compulsory purchase planning order to obtain the land surrounding the runway for an extension, like they did for the N22 bypass through Ballincollig. I think this would be a more logical step in order to stop diversions and attract new traffic. I wonder how much this would cost versus a new Control Tower. Don't get me wrong a new control tower would be great but there are more pressing issues to be rectified I would have imagined. Any thoughts?

I don't believe it's a question of investment in a control tower displacing investment in runways or taxiways as the funds for a control tower will come from the IAA but they would not be contributing to any runway development as that is for the airport itself to fund.

As for 07/25, I think it may well be a more viable option for extending, as there is plenty of land to the west. Some posters have cited the road as an obstruction but that is very easy to run beneath the extended runway. How many airports around the world have we all seen that in, and they do it for 4 lane motorways and railways...I'm sure we could manage a 2 lane backroad!? The biggest drawback is that an "extension" to 07/25 is going to cost a lot more as it's already a lot shorter, and hasn't had the pavement investment of 17/35.

In Dublin, the R108 would go straight through the main runway. So, it routes around the perimeter of the airport. It's a much busier road than the one in the way of the westward expansion of 07/25, so you can be pretty certain that just running the road around the perimeter would be ther prefered solution if an extension were to occur. No need for expensive tunnels.

Ei -> Ork : Man
 

does anyone have any ideas as to why EI have reduced this service. Is it possible that EI are going to announce another s/h route ? I myself am surprised to see a reduction in service. If anything, I expected it to go daily

The aircraft is going to be operating MAN-DUB on the Wednesday and Sunday, so it won't mean any new route from Cork.

My guess is that the extra Ryanair capacity to Liverpool has caused a change of mind.

Ork-man
 

I agree with providence, I would have expected the service to go daily as well, as the fares were not that cheap and seemed to be selling OK. Fares seemed to be in line(or higher) than LHR for most days.

It is also somewhat strange the the exact OPPOSITE days(apart from Sat) will now be servced as was proposed. There was mention before of "slack" in the EI timetable, so maybe if they juggle things round a bit, it would fit. I remember talking to an F/A shortly after the announcement was made and she said "we expected to get it"

It is strange that EI would not serve Sundays and Fridays, the two biggest days for UK-ORK travel. Has anybody seen what WW charge most sundays to MAN? Usually 100EUR including tax, unless there is an offer on, its about 30-50. Thats ONE-WAY!
Let us also remember that in the late 90s there EI had multiple daily services to MAN,and BHX, along with 5x daily to LHR, and there waere also other regional UK airports served with F50/146. There was also BA to LGW, MAN and GLA.

In previous years links to the UK were far more frequent than they are now.

EI: ORK - MAN
Aer Lingus are taking the completely wrong approach on the ORK-MAN route! If they want to compete then they should go all out and operate the route with a high frequency and attractive schedules.

Now they're just going to lose money! They have no hope when you compare their crap schedule against that of the competitors :ugh:

FR: ORK - LGW
The ORK - LGW schedule has finally been modified to fit with the summer ORK - DUB schedule. It has yet to be revealed however whether the FR aricraft will do another quick Dublin rotation in the late evening. Say 2105 - 2155 and back 2220 - 2310 ....?

Fr Ork - Dub
 

A fifth daily rotation on ORK-DUB is in the FR booking system this morning.

The times are (rather scarily) exactly as Charlie Roy predicted.

I cant believe there will be 5 daily FR to DUB, and 9 daily RE to DUB! I know that there isnt 14 flights every day of the week, but thats still a lot of flights between both cities!

They hardly want my sympathy but that is now the feeling I am arriving at in relation to Cork Airport. A frequency cut on a new route before it even starts with EI on MAN-ORK and as pointed out above no Fri/Sun flights! This is really the Pox of Cork Airport in full flight. What has got into EI to bring this on as it seems to me they are just not interested now on making a go of MAN-ORK and leaving Cork pax to the mercies of bmi baby and their crews in not conducting CATII approaches to Cork in low visibility operations. If for no other reason this is why bmi baby are in need of a good shake up on MAN-ORK. The EI planners have really messed this one up before it even starts.

Now, today we have more news that FR are adding in a fifth ORK-DUB flight! Looks like they are all out to get Aer Arann? Well, for Cork Airport's sake let us hope that FR do not succeed as it might turn out like easyJet all over again. They might wipe Aer Arann off the Dublin route and as soon as that happens would FR reduce flights or even try to quit like they did by at first reducing LGW flights and later trying if they could quietly drop LGW all together before the heat was turned on and this coming summer's LGW flight was restored.

Five return flights to Dublin! Gee, it just defies me that with all their hundreds of destinations Ryanair have this fixation on not offering any other choice from Cork. What are they on? They must be nuts? EMA, PIK, CRL, somewhere in Germany/Italy/France/Spain - there has got to be one destination that would be a winner without affecting the ever precious Shannon operation?

Cork needs EI or FR or some carrier to consider a 99 seater aircraft for operations if their courage fails them with the 174/189 seaters on potential new routes? Without knowing the detail JetBlue seem to have this done right with the ERJ 190 series aircraft?

Otherwise, we are left with the present madness and this cannot be allowed to continue because Cork Airport is being left further and further behind.

Did any of you hear Mr Joe Gantley, Chairman of the Cork Airport Authority on the RTE Radio 1 business show last Sunday morning at 10 am? The discussion was on business in general firstly but the host of the show then introduced the Flyglobespan Knock project and Mr Gantley was asked for his thoughts on a potential North Atlantic project from Cork. Without naming it he referred to the failed Slatterys project from autumn 2005 and how Cork people did not support the flights. There was little encouragement from Mr Gantley on the subject. It was a pity because he had a chance to suggest something like how a Cork route to America would be very likely a goer if an
airline with a leading brand took it up, eg, Continental, Aer Lingus, Delta etc.

Certainly, this afternoon in Cork there are plenty of Bus Eireann city busses covered in Continental Airlines' logos advertising the Shannon to Newark service.
What a mockery these bus ads make of Cork Airport! Is there anyone at Cork Airport that can react to this kind of open humiliation.

Is there anyone in charge at Cork Airport that has an ounce of pride in their job and in their airport or don't they care?

Ork-dub
 

Johnrizzo there are only 7 RE flights daily, however that still means there are 12 flights daily. Considering FR are selling seats for €7.50 all in at the moment the route mustn't be doing very well. It has been said previously on this thread that the route was achieving just 60% load factor when the route was just three daily, I wonder what the loads will be like for five daily. It's even more surprising when you consider the fact that they probably only needed one crew daily to operate the old schedule while now they will need two, just to fit in the extra Dublin rotation, increasing costs significantly. With a tightening of the schedule the aircraft could do a rotation to Prestwick which would have a much better yield than an extra Dublin rotation. However it looks like FR are determined to drive RE off the route and to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the LGW route were operated on a W pattern leaving the Cork based aircraft free to operate up to 7 flights a day to Dublin.

Cork needs EI or FR or some carrier to consider a 99 seater aircraft for operations if their courage fails them with the 174/189 seaters on potential new routes? Without knowing the detail JetBlue seem to have this done right with the ERJ 190 series aircraft?

The 190 and ORK are a match made in heaven. Its a very, very effecient aircraft, seat 100 in more comfort than many widebodies, has very low fuel burn and only need two hosties. So Tom if you wnat to buy me a few 190s....my brithday is comming up soon.:ok: Promise Ill do CATII just for you!

I really am of the opinion that the CAA have lost the plot, they are clueless, they do not go after business and by all accounts show, at best, total apathy for new business (EZY) or at worst distain (Long haul).

Honestly if a few of us on here got the airport for six months.......AT THE VERY LEAST there would be serious efforts at pulling NW/DL/CO/Globespan or whoever. I would love to see flyBE at ORK as well, along with more regional UK frequencies and destinations.

One daily service to MAN/BHX na d a half arsed EI schedule is a joke.

I think Brian made a good point about JetBlue, EI should consider a smaller jet option. They seem to have left go of regional operations and focused on DUB and a little on ORK in recent years. But seeing as they only have bases in Ireland it seems unwise to not utilise regional airports more for both feeder traffic and short haul routes.

In fairness to RE they have opened a lot of routes from ORK giving us more direct flights. However the ATR is only going to get you so far. For example cities like Madrid would probably be better served by a smaller (99 seats) jet.

TERMINAL
I don't understand why the people of Cork aren't more p'd off about the expenditure on a new airport that is only currently meeting the demand. A few weeks ago I was in the departures lounge early in the morning and couldn't help noticing how packed it was. I know it was near xmas and peak time but its new!!

Air South West
 

It seems that Air South West are all set to launch Newquay Cork for the Summer. At last something for the CAA to celebrate.

Good news about Air Southwest. Cead mile failte go Corcaigh! Nice little airline and nice Dash 8s. Hope they do well. How are they in LVPs - CAT I/CATII?

It might have to do with it being winter time but have heard that an American Challeger biz jet that arrived today is being allowed parking for no less than about 5 nights at Cork Airport! A good little earner for the CAA!

Off to Madrid in the mornin' with she who must be obeyed. Who would have thought it just a few short years ago - Madrid from Cork? How bad for Cork Airport! The EI892 might be even up to the airbridge tomorrow morning! If she is there will be a full report!

Am I alone in suspecting Ryanair have screwed up big time with Cork and would love to get off the Dublin route? Sure they've added a fifth, but at a time of day which will only rob from their other service and Arann's last rotation. They are clearly struggling to get good loadfactors as they seem to always have fares for 5 or 10 euros including all charges, so I suspect there simply isnt the market for this sort of capacity on the route. By my back of the envelope, 70 737 sectors per week is around 675,000 seats per year, plus Arann on around 250,000 seats, but the market is still no more than 500,000 per year, even with giveaway fares pushing growth.
The script must have assumed Arann would throw in the towel sooner than now but they seem to be doing ok, certainly down on last year but still pretty high loads on many of the ATR flights I have used in the last few months, and not necessarily cheap either.

Fr Ork-dub
 

I think you are almost certainly corrrect , heythere. I imagine FR though RE would have pulled an EasyJet and fecked off long before now.

IIRC RE did reduce frequencies quite dramatically after teh initial announcement of FR on the route. But they seem to be doing fine as they are back up to seven daily flights (from 4 at the lowest point, IIRC). That was certainly not part of the FR plan. And as you so rightly point out, REs fares are not exactly the bargains FRs are.

It would appear that the short check-in times (as short as 10-15mins in reality) ticket flexibility, coffee and newspapers have kept the business traveller loyal. Im sure the fact that the walk to FRs A gates at DUB is a good 5-10 minutes longer than RE's dosent do too much harm to RE either!

Ryanair
 

Many people find taking the train less stressful. Maybe if Ryanair could be more flexible with Domestic services they might get more train users to switch. The emphasis on checking in 2 hrs before departure is a huge turn off. Maybe allowing people to change flights without incurring massive extra charges might also help.
Aer Arann might be still on the route but Ryanair have very very big cash reserves so I'd expect them to stay and the evening departures from Dublin and Cork should generate new business during the summer months.
CAA must be hoping that both carriers stay on the route as if either pulls out it will almost certainly lead to substantial negative growth at Cork for 2007 in view of their failure to attract any significant new business.

You can check in as late as 40 mins prior to departure with Ryanair and only 30 mins before departure with Aer Arann who can be quite flexible on check-in times.

Also if you have Ryanair's priority boarding (and hand luggage only) you just have to be at the security gate 30 min before the flight. (Even less I imagine if the security guy is in a good mood....)

Ork-dub
 

That's true but the perception among many members of the public is that you need to be there 2 hrs beforehand. Ryanair highlight that when booking. There is also a perception that the journey from City Centre to City Centre is the same length by train.
I much prefer the plane but the overwhelming majority are still using trains. A clever marketing initiative might change things.