To be honest, I had understood when originally announced that Budapest Poznan and Malta were to be year-round.

Alicante is welcome for the Winter as Malaga and Faro had shown they could go year-round, so Alicante was an obvious next step. Palma next?

Flight times suggest all will be operated from aircraft based away from Cork

Palma isn't even available from Dublin. The place dies in winter.

Precisely ! I'd be more confident of Barcelona hanging around for the winter (as the next goal for management).

Some positive news on potential New York flights to Cork in the pipeline..

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breaki...rs-909529.html

JetBlue have been saying recently that they are looking at transatlantic flights on the A321NEO so Ireland has got to be in their sights. With Dublin and Shannon having so many transatlantic airlines (Shannon actually has 7!), Cork and Belfast have got to be contenders for JetBlue.
Shannon is amazingly successful on transatlantic routes with a such a small population compared to Cork. It actually has 5 airlines on the New York routes!
Aer Lingus, United, Delta, BA and Norwegian.
If United switched their 757 New York service to Cork, they would have no competition on a New York service compared to 4 other competitor airlines at Shannon!

Shannon has 7 transatlantic airlines?

You can't count BA either, they don't take passengers.

I make it six - Aer Lingus, Norwegian, United, American, Delta and Air Canada. I guess BA are needed to make that seventh.

Quite impressive growth at Cork, for the soon to be second largest english speaking city in the EU!

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breaki...10-910917.html

Sat 16th March
 

Hi there,

Anyone know why the 06:40 Ryanair departure to Stansted was delayed on Saturday morning (16th March)? The Aer Lingus/Aer Lingus Regional departures looked to go either ontime or with minor delays.

wind above limits

The 737 is a little less tolerant of crosswinds at takeoff than the A320.

The Aer Lingus Regional ATRs can opt to use 07/25 to takeoff to reduce crosswind component.

Route numbers for the top 25 routes for 2018 and change since 2017

LHR 403,269 (+1,808)
STN 346,997 (-6,010)
AMS 155,796 (-12,354)
AGP 149,800 (+12,567)
LGW 122,928 (-2,498)
CDG 122,609 (+31,989)
FAO 118,805 (+4,170)
ACE 112,270 (+6,384)
MAN 106,328 (+785)
BHX 77,171 (-374)
LPL 72,226 (-861)
PMI 52,954 (-498)
EDI 50,292 (+3,122)
BRS 39,209 (-1,518)
WRO 37,469 (-205)
TFS 34,556 (+4,227)
ALC 34,483 (+2,931)
GDN 31,974 (+2,834)
BCN 30,816 (+2,902)
LPA 30,073 (+5,488)
PVD 28,070 (+11,965)
GLA 25,681 (+352)
SOU 24,202 (+251)
REU 22,421 (+4,493)
ZRH 15,865 (+8,126)

It seems that AF/KL might be rooting passengers through CDG rather than AMS - makes sense to fly people on AF metal, rather than an EI codeshare.

PVD seems to be doing well, but the future there is uncertain, are passengers still being offered a bus transfer to Dublin?

EI offered fewer AMS rotations last year, so that is the major cause of the drop in figures (in fact available rotations was the largest driver on every route). It's probably more that IAG would prefer passengers to route through LHR. The fare war in Dublin between EI, KL and FR is probably not helping either.

Regardless of what happens, PVD will be down this year, because it didn't operate January to March, while it only missed November and December last year. Also April's passengers will get flown out of Dublin for the time being. I think the expectation is that passengers will be bussed until late April at least.

It looks like AF is gone for the winter.