Cannot for the life on me understand what marketing the airport actually do but yet they get award after award and certainly market their achievements. They really need to go after the 35-120 seater aircraft market for feeder service into hubs. You never see marketing of the airport or destinations north of Gort and its one area they should be targeting with the Tuam bypass open. As for marketing abroad they are non existent except for the token mention through the Government bodies at exhibitions. Dublin is being promoted from these bodies and in fairness not on purpose but because they push DUBLIN as a gateway hub where you can fly to any where within Europe and the Middle East.

They really need to stop attending these “routes” seminars where they promote themselves along with the other 000’s of airlines. Better to actually spend the funds on marketing the properties & attractions within their own portfolio and work with the Western seaboard accommodation types such as Dromoland, Ashford, Adare, cottage rental etc. Why not have a “promo” with your gateway to the Ring of Kerry etc. Lough Derg with the boat rentals and fishing would appeal particularly to most Europeans. The airport management need to rid themselves of the civil service mentality and think outside the box.




The management seem to still have the “existing” fear of not trying to upset Ryanair or Aer Lingus.




Unless I’m mistaken it’s very difficult to see what routes and destinations are available on the new website so if someone for say in the US was planning to visit IRELAND and base themselves in an area with the idea of availing of “reasonably” priced flights to areas in Europe it would certainly rule Shannon out. As for the new website where are the pictured links to all of the attractions that the airport authority get the funds from ie Cliffs of Moher, Bunratty Castle etc.




We should have as a minimum flights on Fridays and Tuesdays to each of these hubs on a year round basis and not served with Aer Lingus or Ryanair but with the main players to offer connecting options as well as the weekend city breaks.




Amsterdam AMS

Paris CDG

Frankfurt FRA




Brexit ready they are not. Love supporting my local airport but 90% of the time I’ve to take the motorway to DUBLIN not because of point to point route availability but due to lack of connectivity from Shannon. Aer Lingus for the most part into HEATHROW means a long connection time between flights due to earlier departures from HEATHROW by other carriers. A 6am from Shannon to HEATHROW would be ideal but can never see it happening due to other reasons.




Rant over!,

Disappointing news about Kuwait, anyone know the actual pax numbers on these flights and the annual impact?

Shannon - Frankfurt

1pw (sat)

begins May 2019

Shannon hasn't a great future unless it's VERY heavily subsidized

Aircraft ranges increase all the time and even places like SIN can now be bypassed on the London - Australia route

It has a very limited local market - so it's future is possibly more like Inverness - ie inbound tourism plus a role as a ferry base for the short-legged aircraft. I doubt anyone would set up a big training base or a maintenance facility

Rumours of Ryanair, however they are false.

Suspect maintenance - like most other things - will move East with time

I guess you could set up a hub & spoke distribution service for parcels tho'.......... weather is pretty good in general and there is a lot of space - and Ireland is pretty famous for it's "flexible" attitude to taxing Multinationals - especially US one's.......

Announced as 2 pw this morning with Lufthansa.

Expectations need to be realistic as regards Shannon traffic. Everybody wants the airport to grow but I think the current traffic is quite respectable for what is essentially a regional airport, and given its size it has a good proportion of TA flights.

Ryanair had a huge programme at a point in time, and they didn't bring the prize of inbound tourism and cut the base right back, it just didn't meet their requirements financially. Realistically it is only Ryanair who can bring the scale that posters on this forum might expect.
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The airport is very seasonal and relies on strong American in bound tourism. So much so almost all the TA flying gets suspended in the low Winter across early Q1..

The future has to be about maintaining the current network, growing other income streams and bring small incremental flying ...EI-BUD.
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A321 NEO LR
 

Interesting about the A321-LR.
Looking ahead to Summer 2020 there will be 2 Aer Lingus A321-LR based at Shannon.
1 for the daily JFK route, 1 for the Boston route.

It appears that 1 of those will also do a cheeky SNN-LHR-SNN in the mornings, every morning in Summer 2020.
The other will have room to do a short morning rotation too, in theory...

Meanwhile the A320 which usually does 3 SNN-LHR-SNN per day, will now start it's day at 12:25pm, which is indeed not very efficient.

Malaga seems to be operated by a Dublin based aircraft on a W routing.

If they do send the A320 to Europe before LHR it will be an early start. the current block times are 2:40 and 2:45 respectively. There is currently a 50 minute turnaround at FAO, for example, but that could be a little shorter.
SNN 0600 FAO 0840
FAO 0920 SNN 1205

Its not impossible, but its very tight. Its entirely possible that EI may be able to shuffle slots around and get a later departure from SNN. Nothing from ORK, DUB or BHD really fits the bill, good job IAG have a lot of slots, if needs be. The alternative is that EI think enough people will want to fly from SNN to FAO at 0540, or they plan somewhere like AMS or CDG with shorter flight times.

Could they play the TSA preclearance card with a mini hub at SNN?

They will only use A321LR not two. CDG 3 weekly was tried before and failed. 2020 schedules released are just the same as 2019 for now so don't read much into that. I have a feeling extra FAO might operate daily instead of x4 weekly.

don't discount a BHX or MAN. The connecting traffic to the US both is huge..Neo could do LHR and the 320 one of those...

Thats true, but there isn't any extra capacity being put into SNN at this stage - the 321 is, bar 4 extra Business Class, a 1-for-1 replacement for the 757. Unless yield and loads are dire and Dublin bursting at the seams I don't see a reason to fly half-empty A320s on flights between SNN and UK/Europe. SNN is based on O&D - any connections are gravy, but without decent yield O&D it will be very tough. Each and every decision is now answerable to Madrid, underperforming routes starve the entire airline of investment, not just SNN. IAG have many other options to place new A320/737s coming on-board. If they can make more money in Vienna with LEVEL on the side, than at Shannon with Aer Lingus thats where they will go. TD's be dammed.

A remote possibility is - maybe - that for the two busiest feeder routes for TATL flights that operate close to capacity or are clogged up with transfer passengers from/to DUB additional demand could be routed via SNN.

brian_dromey,
I'm well aware of the need for any 'potential' new schedule to be commercially viable. Firstly, such a route as BHX currently on many days by ATR can be close to full. Therefore, a need for slightly more capacity. The balance could be connecting.

The volume of passengers crossing the Atlantic is incredible, originating mostly in the US. Therefore if the seats are made available the pax will fly, it doesn't matter if the transit point is SNN DUB or even London. So just as in the case of Dublin as a transit point SNN could support many different routes for connections into EU or GB. Obviously EI are focused on DUB as a hub, but with a spare A320 in the mornings (assuming 321 goes to London) a daily rotation to BHX or even MAN would make sense.

Separately, there is a case for a Paris route on a seasonal basis, but again like any commercial opportunity, there will be other opportunities more attractive.

EI-BUD

do UA b757s not seat 170?

A FlyBe or Stobart feeder service from Belfast to Shannon to connect to the US flights could work.

I'm think most people from Belfast would rather drive to Dublin and go direct. It's only about 2 hours and there are multiply daily flights to JFK and Boston whereas Shannon is only 1x daily (or 6 weekly?) to Boston/JFK. And of course Dublin has a much wider range of destinations.

There certainly would be sufficient demand for this, and Shannon withpre clearance would be a compelling prosposition if marketed correctly. However, the issue is that the only airline positioned to do this is Aer Lingus. They have significant feed on BHD LHR and they probably would have far more attractive short haul with better point to point pick up than BHD, so highly unlikely.

The operation at SNN stands on its own two feet, I think that should be celebrated. Trying to get a dozen low-yield passengers from Belfast or Paris onto SNN-JFK is a folly. With the 321LR, there might be room to squeeze MCO, YYZ or ORD into the schedule and to extend the JFK/BOS to year-round. To me, the idea of a "mini-hub" seems counter-productive. I am presuming that the SNN operation is almost entirely O&D and achieves very good loads. Connecting traffic would offer a low-yield and potentially displace SNN O&D passengers, which would be bad for the region. While a hub sounds attractive, aircraft are easily moved - especially if filling subsidised/low-yield/connecting traffic.In Europe a dual-hub has never worked, even in London - easily the most premium and high-volume market on the continent. BA spent hundreds of millions over decades trying to make a dual Gatwick/Heathrow hub work.

When EI ran the MD11 from BFS via SNN the majority of the passengers I remember only went to SNN for short breaks. But it always left with fwd hold stuffed with PMC's full of cargo bound for the states.

I don't think anyone is advocating a dual hub, but merely some limited feed to TATL from SNN using spare capacity that would otherwise sit idle on the ground instead of earning money (as for your remark on the non-existence of dual hubs, Lufthansa is successfully operating a dual hub. You could also argue that SK has a dual hub at CPH/ARN). It would be particularly useful for capacity management as I suppose that O&D at SNN is much weaker in the winter than in the summer.

Btw, last year when I was looking for flights to the US, I was offered a Star Alliance conncetion via SNN with a Lufthansa flight from FRA and an onward connection on UA. Back then, I was wondering if anyone has ever done that.

Norwegian discontinues SNN, ORK, DUB https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/Nor...f8391fdf8d9-ds

Expecting some positive route developments this week at Shannon ...

It's even in the media....

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/...lona-1.4073539

Lufthansa Cutting Frankfurt to 1pw
 

Lufthansa is going from 2pw on SNN Frankfurt to 1pw for next summer. Dropping the Thursday service, which was with an Embraer190 and only operating on Saturdays with the Airbus A319. Tried to book Thurs flight and its no longer on the website.