Easyjet @Cork
 

Easyjet at Cork is simply not going to happen and everytime i check the Cork Airport forum there is talk about it and I get a little excited to see some "news" on the subject.

No matter what easyjet would ever do @ ORK it would be beaten with a stick by FR, the same thing has happened time and time again from the Republic. Go, Thomsonfly, bmibaby etc. Why would EZY invest in resources on flights to ORK only for FR to offer a giveaway and they lose money. No doubt boardings would be great but sadly so too would losses!

EZY have lots of profitable opportunities from the other bases so dont need to do ORK. Easyjet in its mission for 2007 have set themselves a target of STG 5 profit per passenger. This is crucial they are not interested in price wars....

en2r

A morning flight to Paris makes sense in terms of the forward connections it offers. However, running it on one morning a week for only two months hardly gives it a chance. Perhaps it's there as a tester to see what demand would be like.

I was on the Amsterdam service on Monday, which had a much healthier load. I didn't do a count, but I'd guess 130+. Much more of a surprise was the Amsterdam-Cork flight last Wednesday evening, which must have had 150 people on it. Not bad for a Wednesday evening at the end of January.

Speaking of loads and the like, well, a friend of the family went to New York last week from Shannon on the Continental Airlines flight to Newark and there was just about 80 pax aboard to New York. Ok, it was the middle of January and you have to take that into account but I would hazard a guess that a Cork to NYC pax load would be no worse?

With all the contacts the board of Cork Airport might have to big, multinational business they ought to put a word in their ears and get some capital together for one or two of those new Boeing 737-700ERs. Put in some business class seats for the high yielding pax and you could still easily have about 130 seats avaialble for long haul flights ex Cork.

It will be interesting to see how Knock fares with the Irish Dept of Transport now that the Yanks have approved the Flyglobespan flights from Liverpool to New York. If an exception is made for Knock, well, why not Cork?

For years Cork has been hiding behind the bilateral, if Knock gets a JFK service and I sincerely hope they'll do it'll be some achievement, lets hope the people of Connaught will support it as with the Ennis bypass in place, SNN will be well within the catchement area.

Let's be clear, decades ago a political decision was made to restrict transatlantic flights to Shannon and Dublin. Cork was not included (and the airport had practically no investment over the past few decades) because the powers that be decided it would be a threat to Shannon's future.
Now, in the 21st century, Shannon is able to survive without political interference. Cork still lacks the runway length (as opposed to Knock) to cater for the vast majority of long haul aircraft to do transatlantic services.
The population in Cork City & County is vastly greater than the Shannon region. Most of the Cork population and virtually all business travel to the US originates in Cork and connects through either Dublin, London or Amsterdam.
A small percentage do the 3 hour return road trip to Shannon.
When scheduled transatlantic services do operate from Cork, they will be successful as they currently are from Shannon. All airports in Ireland should be given the opportunity to compete for this business. The sooner open skies comes in and the less political interference in aviation, the better.

Aer Arann seem to be upping the Galway service next summer to allow for day returns on most working days.

The schedule is showing as

Mon 2x daily
Tues 1x daily
Wed 2x daily
Thurs 2x daily
Fri 2x daily
Sat No Service
Sun 1x daily

All services seem to be operated by a Galway-based aircraft, so hopefully there won't be any nasty cuts on other routes to make capacity.

I still regard this route as an indictment of the other public transport options in Ireland, although with the timings, it could be one of the first real opportunities to see passengers using Cork as a place to connect on to other airports not available to them locally.

Re @ Ork
 

Is anyone aware if RE will continue there ORK-NQY route this summer?

Newquay
 

I don't think so. I think the extra flights to Bristol over last Summer are at the expense of the Newquay route.

On sale now NOC - BOS and NOC - JFK ...with flyglobespan.

I don't think flights for Knock are such a big deal for Cork really, since Cork is only interested in direct flights, not through Liverpool.

When Kevin Cullinane spoke at a Rotary lunch, my friend's Dad was there and he sid that Cork has nearly secured DIRECT trans-atlantic flights for Summer 2008.

Well they are direct to JFK and BOS from NOC.

So all in all, knock have managed to secure a scheduled service 3 weekly to NY and 2 weekly to bos, and not chartered. Considering that snn is already in the west of Irl too why in Gods name can't cork secure a transatlantic service. Its quiet obvious thats its not got to do with the open skies policy at this stage. The service also does not need to be chartered as we can see that the new service from knock isn't. Hmmm so what is the issue with cork? there shouldnt be one, runway lenght is fine for a 757 so thats also not an issue?? granted if 07/25 was extended that would be far better but lets not go there.So I don't see the issue here US could do their own deal with cork I am gathering so why is it taking so long?? Why has there to be so much political crap involved, business is business. It will be interesting to see if Snn tries to screw with their plans at knock. If not then cork should have a service ASAP.

Unless it is a scheduled service with an established carrier (ie. not a charter job), then I doubt any t/a service would work from Cork. Charters are simply not reliable enough and offer limited connection possibilities. Just my two cents worth...

With the chaos at LHR regarding security queues and the question hanging over EI's new status once it leaves ONEworld (ie will it still transfer bags? codeshare?) there has never been a better time to start a scheduled service from Cork to the US. Preferrably with a carrier who can provide onward connections

additional point
 

I don't think there's any need to extend 07/25; all that's really needed is to make a small change to the bilateral to allow ORK to allow US carriers to fly from ORK. While it's probably too late for this Summer, I could see something happening in '08 and with CO, NW, AA, US and soon, DL, operating 757s on t/a flights (for which a 7,000' runway is perfectly suitable), the opportunities are certainly there.

There are more than enough Corkonians (or of Corkonian descent) in NY, Boston or Philadelphia to make this a possibility.

However, maybe the key factor in achieving success here will be to take a page out of the NOC handbook; do they wait until the regulatory issues are sorted out, or do they make a deal with an airline and then tell the authorities this is what they want to do? Maybe the latter is better; this way, they can say to the govt, "look, guys, we have this US carrier that wants to add a route; if you obstruct this, we'll make it known that you have scuppered what could be a very important economic boost"?

There is a particularly strong rumour about Delta and Cork for 2008. In fact Delta were hosted by the CAA at the Holiday World dinner last week !!.

As for flyglobespan and NOC, I enquired from the Department of Transport and Aviation Regulatory Department as to the grounds for granting the route authority, and I have received a pretty vague explanation from them. I am currently checking the sections which they quoted, and will post their reply tomorrow.

FCI

A picture you'll all be delighted (even if it's a really poor quality camera phone job) to see taken this evening

This is EI889 from Malaga attached to the airbridge

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/6986/31012007dv9.jpg

Good to see it's being used, which is more then I can say for SNN. I was there yesterday and while waiting for my flight to be called, an EI A320 from LHR arrived and pulled up to one of the airbridges. After what looked liked failed initial attempts to attach it to the plane, they eventually just used the conventional steps.

Progress!

I was on EI725 last firday night, and despite the fact that we parked at stand 6, we used steps.....

Sundays WW to MAN did not use airbridge either as it was delayed and that stand was being used by another EI flight....which did not use the 'brige either.

At least something is happening!

Your just jelous. :}