What kind of equipment do they have for dealing with snow. e.g how many de-icers and what kind of ploughing equipment etc?

Cork Snow Plan
 

Cork has very basic equipment, a few tractors and a lorry. The fact that it was closed for 20 hours speaks for itself.

To be fair Cork has on average been closed only once in a decade by Snow so it's probably hard to justify buying Snow Ploughs etc.

Having said that EI and FR won't be happy.

In fairness, I think ORK has done relatively well this winter, although there have been delays most of those have been dies to weather in places other than Cork, for a change! I don't really see the point in getting snow ploughs and all the rest at this stage, only to see them rusting away from lack of use.

The Aer Lingus schedule looks good, it's been a fair few years since a business friendly schedule like that one has been available for passengers going to/from the Gatwick area. All the LHR flights have been downsized to A320s, although still at a 5x daily frequency, so overall capacity is only up 15% for the summer, which should be fairly sustainable.
The really interesting thing will be to see what Ryanair does next.

Brian.

You need to click on the tab "BOOK", and they're available in that booking engine.

Thanks Charlie. Hopefully they'll load them into the main engine shortly.

Have not been too much in touch in the last few days but for those folk in the know how would you rate Cork's handling of snow clearance etc in marks out of 10?

Now, this morning from my perch today over looking the city the wind and rain are sure doing their thing with much gusto. I know that the Ryanairs from Stansted and Liverpool both diverted to snn and Dublin. The gusts are still something to behold and it will be surprising if the remainder of the day's operations at Cork continue uniterupted. Can you just imagine try to shoot an approach in this wind? Yikes!

(Edited for lousy grammar. Sorry!)

Realistically, are Ryanair going to react to this route?

Ryanair response to EI ORK LGW
 

They could increase frequency to Stansted or Gatwick . They'll have no problem undercutting the present fares in the Aerlingus booking engine. In any event Aerlingus would want to be prepared for a fares war.

Sources tell me there is another significant announcement being made in the near future in relation to Cork . Maybe its the relaunch of ORK PIK but I got the impression that it's bigger than that. Time will tell.

Munster could badly do with a Northern Italy route. For the summer at least.

Significant Announcement
 

Wishful thinking maybe, but could the significant announcement be a 5th Aer Lingus airbus?

We know that they're withdrawing two aircraft from Gatwick and they have to go somewhere.

Significant announcement for ORK?

Probably has more to do with the rumoured EI/RE tie up...

I think Ryanair could increase Gatwick using their Cork based aircraft by decreasing Dublin by one rotation and/or by taking over an additional Dublin rotation using a Dublin based aircraft.

Cork announcement.
 

I genuinely don't know. Some sources in Cork have a habit of hyping up even minor positive developments such as the recent re launch of East Midlands BMI service.

I've no doubt that any RE/EI tie up will also be trumpted as a major breakthrough.

At the end of the day what matters is how soon Cork can get back to exceeding 3million pax per annum?

If Berlin could be saved it would be great but I doubt Cork will be that lucky!

I would even welcome the announcment (remember those!) of an extra bit of concrete at the 35 turntable. In fact, if it helps I will put in the Euro for three or four bags of sand & cement to help the cause and would hope that others might join in too in the The Great Cork Runway 35 Turntable Fundraiser Campaign! We could have a Race Night, a great Aviation Quiz Night, a barn dance or raffle to boost the funds!

So, how about it?

I thought LGW would help get closer to the 3m barrier, but EI have withdrawn the 5th daily flight (the mid-day one) AND plans to operate the 4 remaining services with A320s, as opposed to the A320/A321 mix of last summer. All told capacity is down by about 470 seat a week, so EI will probably carry a similar number of passengers to LON as they did in 2009.

The addition of EMA will help somewhat, as will Wroclaw. If FR does decide to go all out on the LON routes with the usual mix of capacity and shockingly cheap fares 3m pax might be within shouting distance.

Does Lingus codeshare with BA on anything out of Gatwick?

Before there is any widening of the turning circle, Aerlingus should be asked to clarify whether the 330 is still banned from landing in Cork (the airport with only one airbridge).

They also need to clarify if they have taken the widening of the turning cirlcle carried out in 1998 into account.

Is it the case that the ban was inserted as a footnote in the A330 manual in 1995 and the company hasn't got around to re examining it ever since.

This allegedly happened after a nose wheel was damaged when an A330 landed at the airport to promote Aerlingus' new colour scheme.

Once again it should be noted that pilots from no fewer than 4 overseas airlines have had no difficulty carrying out 180 degree turnns with A330's since the Aerlingus ban was allegedly put in place.

I seem to remember a bulletin from Airbus many years ago also restricting the turning angle on the 330/340 nosewheel. I must have seen it in Flight Int.

Yeah here. http://asms.casa.go.kr/asms_ad/file/19991603tb.doc

Maybe its linked to the EI reason

That's a shame about Heathrow being reduced. It's the rotation that uses a Heathrow originating aircraft that's being cut, so I wonder will Aer Lingus simply rent out / sell these Heathrow slots or use them for SNN / DUB / BFS... ?