It should also be remembered that there has been a great increase in the frequency of the train service. There is an hourly departure now, which neither carrier can match.

Personally, I still tend to use the train to travel between Cork and Dublin. Although, it should be faster, it is still competitive time-wise with the plane once check-ins and trips to and from the airport are taken into account. Also, the train ticket provides greater flexibility. If a meeting overruns or I decide to stay in Dublin late for social reasons, my ticket is valid on the next train.

The only times I ever fly between Dublin and Cork are if I'm catching a connecting flight or if my final destination is somewhere around Swords or Malahide.

Ork -dub
 

A flexible ticket should be introduced on a first come first served basis. I know its alien to low cost airlines but it might boost numbers. I'd say both carriers are incurring losses on ORK-DUB and it's a only question of who blinks first although I hope I'm wrong.

Cork-Dublin
 

Perhaps if passengers had to book on a selected flight, but if there was availability they could change to a different flight on the same day at no extra charge? Alternatively Aer Arann could introduce a frequent flyer programme, like Aer Lingus have, which would encourage people to fly so they could earn discounts. As far as I know they don't have one at the moment. Another option might be to include the bus tickets to the city centre in the price of the flight, like Sky Europe do with flights to Bratislava, for passengers who are going to Vienna. Or maybe they could just run adds highlighting the price advntage of flying over the train. All adsso far just highlight how cheap they are, not how expensive the train is!

It seems Aer Arann allow a free change on the Cork - Dublin route as long as you request it before takeoff time on the day of departure.

Ork - Mad
 

Does anyone know what loads are like on this service as ticket prices seem to be quite cheap!?

riptack

Tom the Tenor will be able to tell us when he and his missus return from Madrid :ok:

No doubt Ryanair operating the same route from Shannon isn't helping. In fact, don't think the Ryanair SNN - MAD route is doing very well either....

... it's a pity Charlie if their not doing well, maybe they should have choosen better days to fly! Madird is great for a long weekend so possibly a Sunday flight would be better than a Tuesday one!

Let's see what Tom says! :ok:

Ryanair are planning to add an extra flight per week from Shannon to Madrid for summer 2007

Just returning to this topic briefly, I travelled to Dublin yesterday for the afternoon. Left my office here in Cork city centre at exactly 11.00, was on the Aer Arann flight at 11.40 which departed 10 minutes early. I was sitting in our Dublin office on Harcourt Street at 13.00. Two hours door to door, including checkin and the time to travel to and from both airports. Train can't compete with that!

Ork - Mad
 

Hi,

For those that are interested, ORK-MAD had 91 flown passengers per flight in November and 87 in December.

Please note the usual caveat about loads and yields.

Good timing Angry rebel but you cut it very fine. The plane is far better than the train but I'm convinced that many people are intimidated by the airports.

They've become very unwelcoming in recent years with phrases like "Take off your shoes", "Take off your belt", "BOARDING CARD, passport, BOARDING CARD!" to mention just a few. The friendly helpful staff of yesteryear have all but disappeared. It doesn't bother me as I'm used to airports but its a turn off to many people.

Madrid was great all right and is well worth a visit. Nice and sunny with Monday temps of 17 C plus. We had good start last Saturday morning as the EI892 to Madrid was on Stand 9T at Cork and connected up to the airbridge! Our stroll down the sole Cork airbridge is almost worth a trip report of it's own like they do on airliners.net but we will let that one go for now! ;)

Terminal 4 at Madrid is a magnificent feat of airport engineering and it is a credit to everything that is great about Spain. Introducing a Cork slant to it Terminal 4 at Barajas is, of course, airbridge heaven and our A320 parked in between two Iberia A340-600s. Very impressive sight they were too not having previously seen the biggest of the A340s.

My principal memory of the new Barajas will, however, be tempered by seeing what remains after the ETA bomb at the multi storey car parks across from the new terminal where two people from Ecuador lost their lives a few weeks ago. At first you would think it is just another construction site as most of the rubble has now been cleared away and it is only where you see jagged edges around the ends of reinforced concrete beams that you realise that something more sinister happened. Fairly chilling to see the results of terrorism so up close and personal.

Off time to on time Cork Madrid is less than 2 hours and last Saturday's sunrise was marvellous. Flights from Cork to European capital cities have always done well and there is no reason to suggest that Cork Madrid will be any different. If snn can also hold up a Madrid flight with FR good luck to them. Gee, that is me sounding fairly concilliatory? Spring must be in the air!

It's a pity it doesn't have an Iberia code-share on it. I believe they have been dropped from EI flights on the DUB-MAD route, so it's pretty much a non-starter. The boost of being able to add a few more transfer passengers would give it a nice boost over the SNN-MAD Ryanair alternative.

What were the loads like on the madrid flights TTT?

The timing was tight! What I hadn't mentioned in my post was that I parked outside the terminal, checked in with about 2 minutes to spare, then ran back outside and went and parked the car!

On security, I came through Brussels last week and beeped so much going through the security that I was singled out for a search. I've never seen such a pleasant security guard, who made was is normally an annoying diversion no more than a slight delay. On top of that, he actually searched me, rather than the slight "patting" they give you in Ireland where you could conceal a baby elepahant in your trousers and they'd miss it....

Arann's latest "7" ads pushing their Dublin to Cork services are very reminiscent of the old Aer Lingus battle with Ryanair many years ago - push the positives. The interesting new change is the ability to switch flights on the day for no charge whatsoever and no matter what ticket type, a difficult feature for Ryan to match with their lower frequency.

They have been head to head with Ryanair for 15 months now - is this a record for any turboprop airline against Ryanair on the exact same airport pair?

Old terminal
 

Any news on what's going to happen to the old terminal now that the new one is up and running?

While expanding the apron would be great it seems a little shortsighted to demolish a building with money for any new buildings being v scarce!:ugh:

Who says they want to put new buildings there?

It looks to me that the old terminal will be demolished, and that the tower will too once the met and telephone exchange find a new home.
I see a possibility for EMC's hangar to be moved to this site and keep all executive traffic around the south ramp and stand 2/3.

Whats the point in keeping the old rat infested terminal if it's not required. It would take a lot of work to use it as anything other than a terminal, and Ryanair won't get it either.

Old terminal
 

The new terminal has a capacity of 3m which is the current passenger numbers. So what happens in a few years time when the numbers increase without any additional space?

I would have thought the old terminal could be used as an over spill? Cheaper than building any thing new!

Well it's designed to cope with 3 million comfortably. The old terminal was designed for about 1 milliong but was able to pump through nearly 3 million annually before things got chronic. I can't see capacity being an issue with the way things are being played there at the moment...

Is there any talk of the new cargo facility being moved along?