CORK - 5

[gaelgeoir]

A number of posts regarding transatlantic service from Cork have appeared here over the past months and have usually combined fanciful ideas with wild speculation.

I suggest that Ulick McEvaddy's comments following his recent appointment to the board of Knock Airport could provide a useful reality check to those (Rebel) wishful thinkers. He is hoping for a 2008 launch- beginning with charters, which are permitted in the current Ireland/U.S. bilateral, as indeed they are for Cork.

I don't think there is any point in continuing to blame the bilateral for Cork's inability to develop transatlantic charters when you look at the huge volume of flights of this category from almost every U.K. city.


Continuation of: http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=246248&page=17

[CCR]

Gaelqeoir,
Chartered transatlantic services is fine for Knock as the traffic would largely be tourist based.
Cork is the second most industialised region in the Republic of Ireland and needs scheduled transatlantic services. Given that they are already successful from Shannon (and from Belfast as of last year), it's a no brainer that they would be successful from Cork.
However Cork has 2 disadvantages, a relatively short runway and the current pathetic US bilateral agreement. Once those 2 obstacles are cleared, transatlantic scheduled services will operate from Cork.

[ryan2000]

Charters to Orlando might work but charters to JFK or BOS will not sell as people want flexibility. 757's and 767's should be OK for East Coast operations but the big question is can Cork and Shannon both sustain year round transatlantic flights.

My gut feeling is that in an open skies situation Cork will continue to flounder in relation to US services. For instance the new terminal has no area that pre US Immigration checks can be carried out.

Are the CAA willing to provide the level of marketing support that Delta, Continental or indeed Aerlingus will look for?

Can a wide body jet park at the new terminal or will passengers commence their journey across the pond with a long walk in the rain to stand
14?

Furthermore Cork people's support for their airport is very fickle. They're all for direct services but will then drive to Shannon and fly on a low cost Ryanair flight in order to save a few euro.

It's going to take vision and hard work to get a US service up and running from Cork. Time will tell if the upbeat noises emerging from the airport in recent weeks will amount to anything.

[840]

EI-RB

They used to operate Cork-Brimingham, but pulled out when Aer Arann went onto it.

Looking at their bases, they might consider Exeter (there's currently no service to the English South-West) or Norwich (Further from Stansted than you'd think), but I wouldn't hold my breath on it.

[Charlie Roy]

EI-RB

Recently I emailed Flybe and suggested they introduce Glasgow to Cork. This was their reply:

Thank you for your mail, and suggested new route.

At present we have no plans to start this route, and it is not high on our 'may be' list. We are however looking at developing our operations from Glasgow, and Cork will still be one of the destinations we will be considering. It will however be one of several, and new capacity will be limited so I can give no indication at this time if or when Cork might make the cut.

[brian_dromey]

Just thought I'd mention that Singapore Airlines now offer through serivce SIN and byond. Online booking is also available. Fares are roughly 1200 rtn. Not too bad. Now that I think about it Ive noticed billboard ads for singapore airlines around the City from time to time.

Could this be a "toe in the water" do to speak for SQ? Certainly at DUB, whatever about ORK or SNN.

Still its nice to see that ORK is becomming better and better connected into the global alliances. Codeshares with both BA/oneworld and AA at LHR. Along with SQ. There is also an option to LHR, as EI have a strong relationship with KL/NW and Skyteam @ AMS as well!

oneworld brought few benfits to ORK and now that EI have left the connections ahve become much better, I feel. I still feel that BD could make a 2x daily service to LHR work tho...

[en2r]

Any chance of Fly Globespan operating Glasgow-Cork? They already have a significant presence at Glasgow and the sector time woul be relatively short so could they fit it in? It would also feed onto their longhaul operations from Glasgow

[MarkD]

re: LCY - Q400 is more the beast you're looking for, 360kt and LCY certified. The problem is the only operator in these parts, Flybe, will be busy sucking down BA Connect routes for the next while so how likely is it they are coming calling in the near future.

[en2r]

Has anyone heard anything about the debt issue with regard to the new terminal. They seem to be dragging it out as long as they can. Cork cannot survive in this limbo forever. I'd say there are two possible scenarios. Either they are trying to wait until after the election to sadle Cork with massive debt that it will be struggling to pay for the next 20-30 years, or else they will make the announcement just before the election that it will be debt free, trying to buy votes(like they've been doing at Shannon for years). Either way it looks like they'll be in limbo for a while yet.

[CCR]

I hope Cork is not saddled with the terminal debt otherwise there will be little hope for much needed investment in the runways, parallel taxiways and CAT 111 navigation approach equipment.

[en2r]

I've just been looking at Cork airport website arrivals and departures boards and in a surprise change of fortunes Madrid-Dublin and Rome-Dublin seem to have been diverted to Cork. However they are both scheduled to fly on to Dublin at 23.55. Will they fly light or will the passengers just sit on the tarmac in Cork until the weather improves at Dublin

[ryan2000]

Not weather diversions, it's a result of delays and diversions at Cork last night due to crosswinds. The MAD ORK and FCO ORK flights were cancelled today and the Dublin flights routed through Cork instead.

Remember the geniuses that designed Cork Airport decreed that the main runway should run at right angles to the prevailing winds. That is why tens of thousands of passengers have been diverted over the last 45 winters. 25/07 needs to be extended but I for one won't be holding my breath!

[en2r]

Not weather diversions, it's a result of delays and diversions at Cork last night due to crosswinds. The MAD ORK and FCO ORK flights were cancelled today and the Dublin flights routed through Cork instead.

Remember the geniuses that designed Cork Airport decreed that the main runway should run at right angles to the prevailing winds. That is why tens of thousands of passengers have been diverted over the last 45 winters. 25/07 needs to be extended but I for one won't be holding my breath!
Thanks for the info. I thought it was odd alright when no other flights were diverted from Dublin. This has been just one of many days of diversions. How many more are to come over the next month?? Extending 25/07 will be tricky. It is as close to the Kinsale road as possible at one end, and theres another road at the other end. Unless you build a tunnel under the runway like there is at Amsterdam.

[840]

The road on the western end isn't much of a consideration. It's fairly minor and could just be routed around the perimeter of any extension. Of more interest is the fact that there's the remains of a ring fort down there. Extending the runway would miss it, but it could be a bit of a pain for a construction site.

On the eastern end, the Kinsale road would probably have to go below in a tunnel. I've noted before that the access road to the airport takes an unnecessary dip and then rises to meet the roundabout. It makes me wonder if someone has thought of lowering the level of the roundabout.

There are a few other issues on the Eastern end. There are a few houses that would have to be demolished. The floodlights at the Harlequins hockey ground would have to go, which would probably mean moving the entire club.

A slight problem with the runway is that any taxiway (assuming there would be one) would have to go on the side away from the airport, which is undesirable from an operational perspective. Perhaps a new runway could be constructed parallel to 25/07 with the existing runway turned into the taxiway.

[brian_dromey]

A slight problem with the runway is that any taxiway (assuming there would be one) would have to go on the side away from the airport, which is undesirable from an operational perspective. Perhaps a new runway could be constructed parallel to 25/07 with the existing runway turned into the taxiway.


IF and its a big IF 25/07 were to be extended then its my guess that there would not be a taxiway as all an aircraft would simply backtrack as they do at the minute. I also suspect that for optimal operational effeciency ( and lowest cost) both runways should be extended. The current runway for take off (and landing of heavy jets) with 25/07 used for single aisle jets in cross winds. A thousand feet onto both should do the trick, I suspect.

[gaelgeoir]

IF and its a big IF 25/07 were to be extended then its my guess that there would not be a taxiway as all an aircraft would simply backtrack as they do at the minute. I also suspect that for optimal operational effeciency ( and lowest cost) both runways should be extended. The current runway for take off (and landing of heavy jets) with 25/07 used for single aisle jets in cross winds. A thousand feet onto both should do the trick, I suspect.

PLEASE........given the extremely serious debt facing Cork's management, I find facile statements such as those highlighted above to be absolutely meaningless.

[CCR]

PLEASE........given the extremely serious debt facing Cork's management, I find facile statements such as those highlighted above to be absolutely meaningless.
The terminal debt has not yet been decided. There was a government commitment made not to load this debt onto Cork.
Aer Rianta assumed the Shannon terminal development debt and with an election coming up we expect the same in Cork.
Extension of both runways, parallel taxiways and an upgrade of the nav aids is needed for Cork to compete fairly with the other State airports and help regional development in Ireland.

[Shamrogue]

Brian,

Just a quick note. SQ has had fares from Ork for along time. It's simply the EI feed into LHR, similar to SNN and DUB.

Fares to SIN start around €800 plus taxes - SYD is there from about €900. Just looked up the fare. CX also offer fares etc etc.

For online bookings try ADVERT LINK REMOVED. Great booking engine.

Cheerio

Shamrogue

[brian_dromey]

PLEASE........given the extremely serious debt facing Cork's management, I find facile statements such as those highlighted above to be absolutely meaningless.


Well some posters are of the impression that an entrie runway should be built. That is not the case.Humour me for a moment.....

There are two issues surrounding the runway, runway length and crosswinds.

There is already an X runway at ORK, and it has been used in recent days by EIs 320s. Given that the use of this runway would need strong Xwinds, a pretty short extension should do the trick. It may also be possibe to install CAT III to this runway more easily than it would to the current primary runway.

As I understand it the current runway at ORK is unlikely ever to be Cat III equipped, due to terrain, etc. However this runway could be used for take offs in most condtions. If ORK is ever to get a susatined transatlantic service the runway could be extended. The shorter extension of the current primary, would in all probability cost much less than building a new runawy parallel to 05/27 and tuning that into a taxi way.

With the use of two runways operational felxibility and effeciencies would arise. Think about for a second, as one aircraft can use one runway as a taxiway, while the other takes-off/lands on the other. Seem logical to me.

After the fiasco that is the current terminal debt, ORK needs cost effective, and effctove solutions to teh current problems. While I am not an expert on the geography and land usage around the airport, I would imagine that there is more scope to extend the Xrunway than the primary. How many diversions have there been due to fog and winds this winter? Look at the costs the airlines whould have been spared in fuel, busses and positioning if their planes could land at the airport instead of going to DUB/SNN.

The question would surely arrise, why would you build a brand new runway instead of extending the one(s) already in pace to offer a similar solution.

[Tom the Tenor]

More than likely there will never be any runway extensions to 17/35 or 25/07, a parallel taxiway, a CATIII ILS for a long, long time to come. Nothing. Why you may ask? One, the airlines will not come out publicly and seek these much needed improvements in case it would affect their bottom line by having to pay a bit extra in charges. Two, many Cork politicians are mugs just like a lot of their electorate and the airport is so far down the list of priorities locally it just does not count. The DAA and CAA etc know this well and they are successfully able to fob off Cork passengers and the public up to their eyeballs and blame diversions on fog, winds etc and a lot of the time the public buy it from them hook, line and sinker and they get away with all the spin. For example, on a recent occasion the fact that some flights at Shannon were also affected by strong cross winds was enough of an excuse to explain why Cork had also weather affected flights and that made it all so understandable and, Viola, the crowd at the airport are in the clear with the public!

I have been in London all week due to a family bereavement and I returned to Cork this morning on FR901 for the weekend before having to head back again on Monday next for the funeral on Tuesday. Well, let me tell you all the final approach down the ILS to 17 this morning scared the daylights out of me, we were being tossed all over the place in the turbulent crosswinds, the landing was very hard and rollout was like a Metropolitan Police car on two wheels going around a corner like I saw yesterday in the North London area. The corner was as tight as the runway is at Cork!

It is so plainly obvious that runway 25/07 should be the runway of choice at Cork in the prevailing winds. This has been such a hard winter at Cork for go arounds and diversions off runway 17 you would think lessons would be noted for the future but with the kind of weak leadership there is from the politicians, the players at Cork Airport and from among the general public our airport will continue only to be second class or worse. Even the precious new heartless terminal cannot park a widebody such as a 767 or an A330 nose in to the new terminal? If not, what a farce the place is.

If you are interested in what happens to Cork Airport there is little choice but to carry on but I am now so full of pessimism I have reached such a new low.

And you can forget yer North Atlantic. The Bluebird Cargo 737 from Iceland and the Tango 9 airway down to Faro and the Canaries is our lot at Cork.

[840]

I wasn't so much proposing the building of a new runway as looking at the practicalities involved in extending 07/25.

If any money does become available, it is a low priority below extending the apron space, extending 17/35 and getting CAT III in. Which can probably be read as not in my lifetime...

[Tom the Tenor]

As it happens I was in contact today with the Director of Elections of a principal Irish Labour Party candidate in the upcoming General Elections. They have conducted a well focused canvas on the doorsteps in Cork since February, 2006 and not on any occasion has any voter at all made a comment about Cork Airport. Not one.

Granted, that the social issues of health, security/policing, education/childcare, mortgages/cost of living etc is what counts in a lot of people's minds and pockets but the fact that no questions or remarks were put about the airport is revealing on how little it matters to many Cork people especially in the light of the pretty regular media coverage there was at different times last year about the new terminal and the associated debt.

Looks like the government, Minister Cullen, the DAA/CAA are going to be able to get away with anything they want at Cork Airport? :ugh:

[ryan2000]

All is not well at the airport though. If I was working for the CAA, I wouldn't be complacent about my future. Costs are going through the roof.

[RE72]

Could someone please help me, im just inquiring about the loads BMI baby achieve on there ORK -

MAN
BHXRoutes, As i notice BMI are alot more expensive than EI when booking within a few days of departure and i believe the EI and WW departures are within 5 minutes of each other somedays.

Thanks

[ryan2000]

BMI is well ahead of EI on BHX during November at 75%,EI around 56% but BMI BABY has a Daily service while EI op just 4 per week. Of course yields are the unknown factor.

[Charlie Roy]

RE72

Anytime I check prices for MAN (in advance!) BMI are always cheaper than EI.
And, in fact, BMI charge less taxes than EI. So a BMI base-fare of 20euro is actually cheaper than an Aer Lingus base fare of 16euro (for example), and with BMI you get to check in a bag for free too!

[en2r]

BMI Baby seem to be holding up well to the competition from Aer Lingus on Cork-Birmingham. Hopefully the cycle of a new operator driving the existing operator off the route has ended. First Aer Arann drove Flybe off the route, then Baby drove Aer Arann off the route, before Aer Lingus entered the fray trying to drive Baby off the route. They haven't succeeded so far. However how will the travelling public take to the new Summer timetables which has much later Birmingham and Manchester flights. The Cork-Birmingham leg doesn't get in until almost eleven at night. That won't be popular with those from the West Midlands area who may have to drive home from BHX.

[chrism20]

RE72

Anytime I check prices for MAN (in advance!) BMI are always cheaper than EI.
And, in fact, BMI charge less taxes than EI. So a BMI base-fare of 20euro is actually cheaper than an Aer Lingus base fare of 16euro (for example), and with BMI you get to check in a bag for free too!


BMI do charge for baggage on the baby services (BHX, MAN)

Only the LBA has no baggage charge

[eick320]

The neil prendaville show this morning on local radio 96fm reported that fr has pulled off the lgw route, the conversation was about the number of flts canx or dis-continued ex ork. Has anyone more def info

[Provance]

wow - didnt see that one coming ? Is there any confirmation that FR are going to pull out of the Gatwick route. I would love to see EI uptake the route or see the return of EZ

[840]

The neil prendaville show this morning on local radio 96fm reported that fr has pulled off the lgw route, the conversation was about the number of flts canx or dis-continued ex ork. Has anyone more def info
Was this just said by a random punter on a phone-in or was it said by someone who might know what they're talking about?

At present, Ryanair are still selling tickets on the route until the end of June. Although, perhaps ominously, they are selling Cork-Stansted and Dublin-Gatwick tickets into July.

[en2r]

The neil prendaville show this morning on local radio 96fm reported that fr has pulled off the lgw route, the conversation was about the number of flts canx or dis-continued ex ork. Has anyone more def info
This is ridiculous. We had five flights daily last year, and now we could end up with no service. There must surely be demand for one flight at the least. Easyjet probably won't come back after what happened the last time.

[CCR]

If it's true, it's an opportunity for the 2 other carriers based in Cork, Aer Lingus and Aer Arann or perhaps BMI Baby or Easyjet could also incorporate the route on their summer schedules. The demand clearly exists for this route.

[Provance]

Is the Gatwick route opperated by an ORK based aircraft ?

If so where are FR planning on flying t o instead

[840]

Is the Gatwick route opperated by an ORK based aircraft ?

Yes

I'd still take the Neil Prendeville Show as a very unreliable source. However, I could see Ryanair dropping Gatwick and operating ORK-DUB from Dublin, while withdrawing the Cork-based aircraft anyway.

Aer Arann are the only operator that I could imagine taking up the route in the short-term. BMIBaby have limited marketing ability at both ends of the route and have already pulled off it once. Aer Lingus have no spare aircraft capacity this summer.

[ElNino]

This is ridiculous. We had five flights daily last year, and now we could end up with no service.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the airline that "loves competition." You don't think for a moment that ryanair ever intended to keep a high level of service to gatwick once they'd run Easy out of town? If they ever get EI, expect similar wholesale chopping of routes all across their Irish network. Competition for fr is very definitely not about the consumers interests.

[ryan2000]

Ryanair's cynicism will have reached a new level if they withdraw from Cork Gatwick having got Easyjet off the route.

We'll then be back to the 2003 level of service on Cork London. High yields and not enough capacity. One good reason not to let Ryanair get their hands on Aerlingus.

[Charlie Roy]

I think we're all getting carried away here...

Whoever was talking on 96FM possibly said "Ryanair pulling the Gatwick service" when they meant to say "Easyjet".

Normally the Neil Prendeville show will be repeated in the very early hours of tomorrow morning.

[brian_dromey]

We all know the only reason that U2 are not on the route is because of the presence of FR, and if easyJet were to return I think we could expect a repeat of the former tricks. However maybe easy could use this to their advantage? Especially if FR came back on the route.

FR have already pulled the NOC-LGW route, I think SNN-LGW still survives, but how committed FR is to the route remians to be seen. To be fair LGW is the orphan in the FR route system, STN suits them much better IMO.

On the subject of WW on MAN and BHX, be aware that WW does not include a credit card fee until the last minute, and I think its 7.50 EUR (5 GBP) so the differences between the fares remains the same. eg 19 EUR on EI finishes up at about 54 EUR while the WW FARE OF 30.99 ends up at about 60EUR. So the taxes are about the same really.

[fanatic1]

The flights are unbookable for next summer (June/July) and every other flight is, I'd say it not a matter of uploading schedules.

And...Cork Airport will recieve a new control tower! Yes...it's due.
The Irish Aviation Authority are looking for tenders.

Saw it on a site, Irish Airport News. Search for it in Google.
But do you think the money should be spent on something else?

[en2r]

But do you think the money should be spent on something else?
Cat III, unless we want the next few winters to be repeats of the operational disaster that this winter has been.

[anna_list]

It's a little early to be jumping to conclusions. There are still quite a number of FR flights that can't be booked after July 1st, including most of the PSA base and HHN-OPO.

FR's Cork schedule still doesn't 'work' after the retiming of the Dublin flights from 26th March, so something is definitely afoot. Not sure what though...

[Angry Rebel]

Cat III, unless we want the next few winters to be repeats of the operational disaster that this winter has been.

I agree. Why is the tower being replaced? Are there technical reasons for it? If there aren't, the only immediate benefit I can think of is freeing up space airside and getting the tower across the field on currently underutilised land.

[fanatic1]

Angry Rebel

Yes, this does seem to be the only reason.

[anna_list]

FR ORK - LGW is now bookable through to the end of October.

Maybe we could resume this discussion in a few months time when FR are in the process of sorting out the Winter timetable?:ok:

[snipes]

Cat III, unless we want the next few winters to be repeats of the operational disaster that this winter has been.


The thought of letting my 320 do a cat III autoland onto 17 in cork gives ME the willies.....

Never mind the pax...

[Tom the Tenor]

Talking about what gives you the willies on approach to Cork Airport. Well, it was more of the same last Thursday morning on the FR901 from Stansted to Cork with the Mrs, her Mum, her brother and myself as we had the ride of our lives on our early morning flight after having first checked in around 4.30 am! The storm begun whipping up goodo taxiing out to Stansted's runway 23 and the climbout up to about FL150/170 was a rollercoaster. We levelled off at FL320 & it was reasonably smooth until after our descent began into Cork with the captain advising that the winds were staying just within limits for an approach (to 17.)

Did not stay that way though as the crew threw away the approach shortly after becoming established around 1500 feet when the winds went out of limits at 260 degrees, 30 kts gusting 42 kts. Got a good view of the airfield in the go around! Stayed in the Nagl hold for a bit until we were told the wind had abated & the captain decided to shoot one more approach at Cork. We got much closer this time but at approx 700/800 feet on finals I got a grand view of the extended centreline and lit runway ahead and remember we were were sitting in about Row 18 for the flight and not on the flightdeck! The winds got us once more and it was 260/28 kts with a gust of 37 knots, up to 44 knots.

That was that for Cork and after a 2 hours & 2 minutes flight from Stansted our flight, FR901, eventually landed at Shannon where surface transport to Cork was provided. It was good to land to be sure as even the approach to runway 24 at snn was still fairly rough even though we were into the wind. Spoke with the Captain briefly and he agreed that runway 25 at Cork would be good. What chance of that though? For all we know one of these days there may be grand plan in Cork to close runway 25/07 and put in a few warehouses instead to complement the Business Park across the way and that would be the end of the occasional EI A320 landing on runway 25 in the strong westerly winds.

Makes you think does it not? If runways are to be closed why not shut 17/35 and put up as many warehouses and business parks as you like as long as you lay down an extra 4,000 feet at the end of 25/07? We cant be as sensible as that though, now can we, as that would be getting something right and not arseways and we just could not have that at Cork Airport! :=

[ryan2000]

Some would even say close the airport, rezone the land for housing and with the small fortune in profit build a new one in a more suitable location.

Only this time make sure that the main runway is not at 90 degrees to the prevailing wind and that a CAT3 ILS can be installed without countless excuses as to why it can't happen.

[A319-100]

Heard a vicious rumour that EasyJet may be re-ignitng their interest in Cork. I for one would be a very happy man if that were the case!

:)

[EI-DHC]

A319-100

Were any possible routes mentioned in this vicious rumour?

[ryan2000]

This would almost certainly provoke a reponse from Ryanair.

[A319-100]

Scotland to Cork, Edi or Gla, Not the most reliable source mind you!:confused:

[840]

Glasgow could make sense considering it is unserved from Cork at the moment.

However, Ryanair would respond to it. It might make more sense to simultaneously launch a number (Glasgow, Bristol, Newcastle and Luton maybe). It could give them marketing synergies and would make it more difficult for Ryanair to attack them with their single Cork-based aircraft.
Slight change of topic. Jet2 have increased the number of Cork-Newcastle flights planned for next summer from 4 to 5 weekly. I suppose it all helps.

[A319-100]

Edinburgh may also be a runner as it is only served by Aer Arann and is quite a popular destination. EasyJet have also recently announced expansion plans in Edi & Gla. Edi getting new aircraft soon and new routes announced with more to follow!

[Tom the Tenor]

The only way it might possibly work for easyJet at Cork again might be if they were to do a Ryanair and base an aeroplane. Now that would get everyone's attention. Hire some locally based cabin/flight crews and techies and get their photos in D'Echo to get some good local publicity. After all, both FR and EI seem to be not keen on basing any more aeroplanes locally so there does appear to be a tiny window of opportunity there and a 149 seater jet might be potentially the best possible platform anyway for a Cork based opeation. Go the whole way and set up under an Irish AOC, paint the colours green and there you are, the perfect rival for FR and yet another headache to have to deal with for Cork Airport!

Even a seasonal type operation would be okay to complement year rounders. Anything from LGW, BFS, EDI, BRS, NCL, BRU, DUS, GVA, SZG or MUC, VLC, Venice etc. Perhaps, for cities and markets the size of Cork aircraft the size of ERJ 195s might be even better for Cork. Am I correct in concluding a 99 seat aircraft would need just a cabin crew of two F/As?

It may be argued that the FR 189 seaters are probably too big for any likely routes out of Cork apart from the London Airports?

[brian_dromey]

there does appear to be a tiny window of opportunity there and a 149 seater jet might be potentially the best possible platform anyway for a Cork based opeation.

Anything from LGW, BFS, EDI, BRS, NCL, BRU, DUS, GVA, SZG or MUC, VLC, Venice etc. Perhaps, for cities and markets the size of Cork aircraft the size of ERJ 195s might be even better for Cork. Am I correct in concluding a 99 seat aircraft would need just a cabin crew of two F/As?

EasyJets A319s have 156seats. IMO It would be more likely to see any based a/c as a 319 as the 737s are being phased out of the U2 fleet. I think that STN is the only 737 base right now, NCL, BRS, etc have all moved to teh 319, as far as I know.

With regards to FAs its one per 50 pax, so 100=2 hostes. Easyjet have had to put an extra CC, for a total of 4, on its 319s bcause they managed to ram 156 seats(although rarely pax!!!) into those 319s.

I think that if U2 were to come back to ORK they would either base an aircraft or two here, or else have a numer of destinations from other bases. As far as I know U2 have a pair of 319s unassigned to a base for delivery this year, so you never know!

[A319-100]

I think EasyJet would be a success at Cork. The 319 has 156 seats and would be easier fill than the 189 seats on a FR. I believe that easy did not leave cork because of ryanair particularly, I am sure they did not help, I just think they had bigger fish to fry out of LGW. I dont think they were getting a great deal from the Cork Airport Authority.

I think with the right deal Easy may re-appear in eire again, after all they have 200 odd aircraft to put somewhere in the next decade!

I think it would be good for cork and good for easy. Fingers crossed. These are obviously just my humble thoughts and opinions, plus a little bit of wishful thinking on my part.

We will see I guess.

For what its worth I think that Easy are in a different league to ryanair from a customer and employee point of view.

Just wondering how Aer Arann are doing in Cork at the moment. When are their new arcraft arriving?

Just for info only 737 bases are Belfast, Newcastle and Luton. cheers

[CCR]

The only likely expansion of EasyJet in Ireland this year will be from Belfast.

[Tom the Tenor]

Yes, guess it is very much a long shot to see easyJet in Cork again but you can never say never. One aeroplane with the right kind of local branding and headed up by the right hometown personality and it could work for easyJet. A key to doing business in Cork in my opinion. This idea has so far been lost on by the bigwigs in FR due to their preoccupation with their big snn base and their Dublin HQ.

Would love to know what happened to get Gatwick from Cork back on line from July? Very welcome decision from Ryanair, of course and if anything they might restore the 2nd daily flight whilst they are at it even if it was just for the summer. I might not be the smartest at assessing the yields of this or that flight but 160 or 170 load on a Gatwick flight got to be a whole lot better than a 60/70 load on a Dublin?

Then again, what do I know!?

[ryan2000]

Why would Easyjet draw Ryanair on them just to fly to Cork. Unfortunately the vast majority of people in the Cork area flew with FR and EI even when Easyjet were cheaper.

It would be great to see them back but with three Irish airlines based at Cork they better be prepared for a fight.

[EI-BUD]

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....

[840]

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.

[Tom the Tenor]

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?

[ryan2000]

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.

[CCR]

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.

[840]

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.

[RE72]

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

[en2r]

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

[Jet_stream]

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

[fanatic1]

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.

[Vapor]

Well they are direct to JFK and BOS from NOC.

[mark_heg]

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.

[asianfly]

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...

[riptack]

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

[akerosid]

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"?

[FlyCorkInternational]

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

[840]

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

[EI-DHC]

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.

[brian_dromey]

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!

[StephenM_SMC]

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

Your just jelous. :}

[gaelgeoir]

Based on the Knock precedent there's nothing to prevent an Irish or other E.U. airline operating a scheduled transatlantic service from Cork. In addition, a U.S. or European airline can operate unrestricted transatlantic charters from there. Clearly none yet believes that it's a viable market.

[840]

That's what I was thinking. Rather than creating a fuss saying that Knock shouldn't be allowed to do this, people in Cork would be much better off letting Knock make the precedent and using this to justify flights ex-Cork.

[mark_heg]

agreed, but how long does it have to take for it to occur in cork , and yes cork would be a viable market hands down thats a no brainer :ugh: And whats this about Delta?? I'll believe it when I see it, where is the foundations to this ?

[FlyCorkInternational]

the following is the full text of the reply i received from the Aviation Regulation and International Relations division of the Department of Transport in Dublin.

1 The Flyglobespan flights originate from two destinations in the UK and have been given permission to land and pick up passengers at Ireland West (Knock). The airline is designated under the UK US Air Services Agreement The traffic rights to operate the routes set out in the application are based on the UK US Air Services Agreement and traffic rights have been approved by the US and UK authorities.

The Minister for Transport has granted authorisation under Section 8 of the Air Navigation and Transport Act, 1965 for the operation of air services by FlyGlobespan via Ireland West Airport Knock to and from two points in the UK and US for an initial period of twelve months:

2 As the Ireland US Air Services Agreement is still in force the status of Shannon and Dublin Airports is unchanged

3 On the question of Cork Airport it may be of interest that permission was given some years ago for an Irish carrier to operate direct tranatlantic flights from Cork to designated points (as per the Ireland US Air Services Agreement) in the US. The operator did not proceed with the service. We have no application for transatlantic flights from Cork at present.

[Tom the Tenor]

Can anyone point us to the actual wording of Section 8 of The Air Navigation and Transport Act, 1965 and what Irish carrier was it that sought rights some years ago to fly routes between Cork and points in America? Lost on me? Translift?

If and it is indeed a big if were Delta Airlines ever to turn up at Cork where would they park if a 767 was used? It would not be the airbridge stand, 9T and that is for sure! It would be a brisk walk down to the sole widebody stand if you are lucky enough to be able bodied! Delta would just love that!

You can just imagine the scene, the geniuses up at Cork plying the guys from Atlanta with loads of Murphys and Heineken over at The Kiln and in a weakness Delta give in and tell Cork that they'll stop off a 767 at Cork at something like twice a week from next year from somewhere like Amsterdam or Brussels on the way to New York only to be told by the Cork crowd that they don't want a 767 and that a 757 will do instead!

Best of luck to everyone at Knock Airport with the fabulous series of flights from flyglobespan to New York and Boston. More than anything Knock has shown up what a farce the whole US - Ireland bilateral actually is, nothing but a nasty, gutless piece of verbal engineering that has given nothing but positive discrimination and comfort to the cute boyos in Shannon at the expense of the rest of the people of Ireland and especially those livining within the catchment areas of Cork and, indeed, Dublin Airports. Let it not be said that I have not ever had some sympathy for Dublin Airport over the thirty years or so! Mind you, the same cannot be said too much in relation to Dublin's regard for Cork Airport?

[ryan2000]

There are a number of transatlantic carriers looking at Cork.

It appears that Delta were guests of the CAA at last weeks Corporate Dinner at the Travel Fair.
This did not go unnoticed in some quarters but I wouldn't get too excited about it at this stage.

[EI-DHC]

Received this e-mail from Cork Airport after I enquired abou any t/a routes being started from ORK:

"I can assure you that the Management Team are in regular and frequent contact with existing and potential airline customers to secure even further new routes for Cork Airport.

As you will have seen from recent announcement, Aer Lingus has recently added Madrid, Lanzarote, Prague and Manchester to increase the number of routes being offered by Ireland's flag carrier to 17. Aer Arann has recently added Galway and Leeds Bradford as well as increasing rotations to Dublin while Centralwings has added Warsaw to their two current routes to Poland.

Added to that, the increase in winter sun and winter ski charter flights this season and our passenger business continues to grow an impressive rate of 11% year on year, serving over 3 million passengers in 2006 - an historic landmark year for Cork Airport.

Our marketing team are in constant contact with most if not all of the airline partners that could offer direct flights to New York and other east coast destinations but no announcement is imminent on transatlantic flights at this time. Our aim is to deliver a quality airport travel experience to the best international standards and offer our customers an even greater choice of carriers and destinations going forward into Summer 2007 and beyond."

No t/a routes in the pipeline just yet.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/images/misc/progress.gif

[ryan2000]

The news that Aerlingus has added Madrid, Lanzarote and Prague to their network is about 7 months old and has been repeated ad nauseum in press releases from Cork. Manchester is a bit more recent (3 months old)

No mention in the letter of all the routes that have been lost including CSA, Easyjet,SN Brussells, Loganair and BMI Regional or why Knock has beaten the airport serving the 2nd largest City in the state to transatlantic flights.
The last part of the question is being asked in many quarters this week inside and outside of Cork Airport

[MarkD]

NOC is probably a bit more convenient routing wise LPL/GLA-Ireland-US than ORK most days... JER-ORK-US anyone :hmm:

[jbsharpe]

In case anyone didn't spot the fascinating thread concerning the FR Bishopstown low-pass incident..

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=262132

JBS

[Tom the Tenor]

Have no fear - hard to miss the AAIU report on the FR 737-800 at Cork last June 4th. SOPs and CRM were out the door. Cork Airport is famous enough as it is without ever needing another alarming incident like that to occur again.

Aer Lingus have been having two quiet days recently. The MAD flight did not operate yesterday and the ALC flight did not operate today. Whatever about Madrid this reinforces my opinion that Alicante should be dropped for most of the winter in favour of Valencia which at least has a long weekend attraction more so that ALC. Sure hope EI put a bit more thought into where they might go from Cork from next winter. It would be great to see Munich again even if it was just winter only at about two a week?

Dont know for sure but am wondering are DHL being caught out with the ATP in Cork. Two German Metros arrived last night on freighter duty but am not sure if they were DHL related. It would be good to think that the ATP is too small and that an Electra or 757 revival might be considered?

Of course, I may be all wrong and the Metros had nothing at all to do with DHL!

[en2r]

Madrid doesn't seem to be doing very well from Cork. Ryanair's recently introduced Shannon-Madrid route has destroyed any chances the route had of being successful. There really isn't enough demand for two services to Madrid from Munster. I wonder how long FR would take to pull the route if EI pulled Cork-Madrid. I'd guess a few days at the most.

[parsi]

Went over to Berlin on one of the old 6euro flights on Thursday and there were 72 on board. Cam back this morning and it looks like the inbound and outbound legs had similar figures. Comfy flight and arrived early. Friendly staff and no doubting that the homeward flight was captained by a Cork man..

Arrived into the chaos that seems to be Cork Airport - the Blue Channel for customs was closed off. All the newly arrived folk from the Canaries decided to hang around just outside the baggage area.

As it becoming a habit I had to visit 4 pay stations in the long term car park as three were out of order. Surely they cold ensure that the damn things work..

[asianfly]

As it becoming a habit I had to visit 4 pay stations in the long term car park as three were out of order. Surely they cold ensure that the damn things work..

Similar thing happened to me at SNN recently...except that the machine was working in that it would take your money, but give no change! As I had put in a 20 Euro note, I obviously went to the desk and asked them to retrieve my outstanding amount. The guys there told me to tell the man at the exit booth my story and he would refund me.
Only in Ireland would we have a self service machine and then a staffed exit booth where a guy collects the ticket off you! An automatic and manual at the same time!!
Also, given that no-one was getting change, that 'dodgy machine' was basically rounding up the car park fees to whatever people put into the machine. A nice little money earner at out state airports no doubt.
Serving the people me arse....

[runawayedge]

I can assure all you intrepid Corkonians that CRK had nothing to do with the GWY introduction....in fact I understand they were quite bemused when the concept was proposed!

[RE72]

RUNAWAYEDGE,

What Is Your Above Comment In Relation To?

[runawayedge]

Hotel Charlie's email response from the CRK murketing department!

[brian_dromey]

Looks like from March EI are reducing MAN from 5xWeek to 3x Week, in the process dumping the Sunday flights.

There go my chances of Gold Circle...

Bad news, unless they plan to muck around with the schedules a bit to fit in a daily service, with the other 4 operated by ORK based a/c? I believe there might be room in the schedules to do this?

[en2r]

Bookings must have been disappointing! They have 5 per week for the Easter period, but then go down to 3 per week. I suppose Monday and Friday being critical days they couldn't really compete with BMI Baby's daily offering. Perhaps FR reintroducing a daily service to Liverpool hurt bookings? I don't think there is space in the schedules of the 4 Cork based aircraft to fit in 4 flights per week. Perhaps they will operate Cork-Birmingham with a Dublin based aircraft and then use the Cork based aircraft to do M-W-F-S on Cork-Manchester. I'd doubt it though.

[mark_heg]

Just reading about the new control Tower that is to be constructed to the west of the field. Is it really necessary to contruct a new Tower at the present time? It would be a lot more advantageous to extent runways, apron space and upgrage Nav aids. I was just having a look at Google earth there as well, how viable is it to extend 07/25. If this could be done this would be a much better option than 17/35 and install CAT III on it as well. Can they get a compulsory purchase planning order to obtain the land surrounding the runway for an extension, like they did for the N22 bypass through Ballincollig. I think this would be a more logical step in order to stop diversions and attract new traffic. I wonder how much this would cost versus a new Control Tower. Don't get me wrong a new control tower would be great but there are more pressing issues to be rectified I would have imagined. Any thoughts?

[Angry Rebel]

I don't believe it's a question of investment in a control tower displacing investment in runways or taxiways as the funds for a control tower will come from the IAA but they would not be contributing to any runway development as that is for the airport itself to fund.

As for 07/25, I think it may well be a more viable option for extending, as there is plenty of land to the west. Some posters have cited the road as an obstruction but that is very easy to run beneath the extended runway. How many airports around the world have we all seen that in, and they do it for 4 lane motorways and railways...I'm sure we could manage a 2 lane backroad!? The biggest drawback is that an "extension" to 07/25 is going to cost a lot more as it's already a lot shorter, and hasn't had the pavement investment of 17/35.

[840]

In Dublin, the R108 would go straight through the main runway. So, it routes around the perimeter of the airport. It's a much busier road than the one in the way of the westward expansion of 07/25, so you can be pretty certain that just running the road around the perimeter would be ther prefered solution if an extension were to occur. No need for expensive tunnels.

[Provance]

does anyone have any ideas as to why EI have reduced this service. Is it possible that EI are going to announce another s/h route ? I myself am surprised to see a reduction in service. If anything, I expected it to go daily

[840]

The aircraft is going to be operating MAN-DUB on the Wednesday and Sunday, so it won't mean any new route from Cork.

My guess is that the extra Ryanair capacity to Liverpool has caused a change of mind.

[brian_dromey]

I agree with providence, I would have expected the service to go daily as well, as the fares were not that cheap and seemed to be selling OK. Fares seemed to be in line(or higher) than LHR for most days.

It is also somewhat strange the the exact OPPOSITE days(apart from Sat) will now be servced as was proposed. There was mention before of "slack" in the EI timetable, so maybe if they juggle things round a bit, it would fit. I remember talking to an F/A shortly after the announcement was made and she said "we expected to get it"

It is strange that EI would not serve Sundays and Fridays, the two biggest days for UK-ORK travel. Has anybody seen what WW charge most sundays to MAN? Usually 100EUR including tax, unless there is an offer on, its about 30-50. Thats ONE-WAY!
Let us also remember that in the late 90s there EI had multiple daily services to MAN,and BHX, along with 5x daily to LHR, and there waere also other regional UK airports served with F50/146. There was also BA to LGW, MAN and GLA.

In previous years links to the UK were far more frequent than they are now.

[Charlie Roy]

EI: ORK - MAN
Aer Lingus are taking the completely wrong approach on the ORK-MAN route! If they want to compete then they should go all out and operate the route with a high frequency and attractive schedules.

Now they're just going to lose money! They have no hope when you compare their crap schedule against that of the competitors :ugh:

FR: ORK - LGW
The ORK - LGW schedule has finally been modified to fit with the summer ORK - DUB schedule. It has yet to be revealed however whether the FR aricraft will do another quick Dublin rotation in the late evening. Say 2105 - 2155 and back 2220 - 2310 ....?

[anna_list]

A fifth daily rotation on ORK-DUB is in the FR booking system this morning.

The times are (rather scarily) exactly as Charlie Roy predicted.

[johnrizzo2000]

I cant believe there will be 5 daily FR to DUB, and 9 daily RE to DUB! I know that there isnt 14 flights every day of the week, but thats still a lot of flights between both cities!

[Tom the Tenor]

They hardly want my sympathy but that is now the feeling I am arriving at in relation to Cork Airport. A frequency cut on a new route before it even starts with EI on MAN-ORK and as pointed out above no Fri/Sun flights! This is really the Pox of Cork Airport in full flight. What has got into EI to bring this on as it seems to me they are just not interested now on making a go of MAN-ORK and leaving Cork pax to the mercies of bmi baby and their crews in not conducting CATII approaches to Cork in low visibility operations. If for no other reason this is why bmi baby are in need of a good shake up on MAN-ORK. The EI planners have really messed this one up before it even starts.

Now, today we have more news that FR are adding in a fifth ORK-DUB flight! Looks like they are all out to get Aer Arann? Well, for Cork Airport's sake let us hope that FR do not succeed as it might turn out like easyJet all over again. They might wipe Aer Arann off the Dublin route and as soon as that happens would FR reduce flights or even try to quit like they did by at first reducing LGW flights and later trying if they could quietly drop LGW all together before the heat was turned on and this coming summer's LGW flight was restored.

Five return flights to Dublin! Gee, it just defies me that with all their hundreds of destinations Ryanair have this fixation on not offering any other choice from Cork. What are they on? They must be nuts? EMA, PIK, CRL, somewhere in Germany/Italy/France/Spain - there has got to be one destination that would be a winner without affecting the ever precious Shannon operation?

Cork needs EI or FR or some carrier to consider a 99 seater aircraft for operations if their courage fails them with the 174/189 seaters on potential new routes? Without knowing the detail JetBlue seem to have this done right with the ERJ 190 series aircraft?

Otherwise, we are left with the present madness and this cannot be allowed to continue because Cork Airport is being left further and further behind.

Did any of you hear Mr Joe Gantley, Chairman of the Cork Airport Authority on the RTE Radio 1 business show last Sunday morning at 10 am? The discussion was on business in general firstly but the host of the show then introduced the Flyglobespan Knock project and Mr Gantley was asked for his thoughts on a potential North Atlantic project from Cork. Without naming it he referred to the failed Slatterys project from autumn 2005 and how Cork people did not support the flights. There was little encouragement from Mr Gantley on the subject. It was a pity because he had a chance to suggest something like how a Cork route to America would be very likely a goer if an
airline with a leading brand took it up, eg, Continental, Aer Lingus, Delta etc.

Certainly, this afternoon in Cork there are plenty of Bus Eireann city busses covered in Continental Airlines' logos advertising the Shannon to Newark service.
What a mockery these bus ads make of Cork Airport! Is there anyone at Cork Airport that can react to this kind of open humiliation.

Is there anyone in charge at Cork Airport that has an ounce of pride in their job and in their airport or don't they care?

[en2r]

Johnrizzo there are only 7 RE flights daily, however that still means there are 12 flights daily. Considering FR are selling seats for €7.50 all in at the moment the route mustn't be doing very well. It has been said previously on this thread that the route was achieving just 60% load factor when the route was just three daily, I wonder what the loads will be like for five daily. It's even more surprising when you consider the fact that they probably only needed one crew daily to operate the old schedule while now they will need two, just to fit in the extra Dublin rotation, increasing costs significantly. With a tightening of the schedule the aircraft could do a rotation to Prestwick which would have a much better yield than an extra Dublin rotation. However it looks like FR are determined to drive RE off the route and to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the LGW route were operated on a W pattern leaving the Cork based aircraft free to operate up to 7 flights a day to Dublin.

[brian_dromey]

Cork needs EI or FR or some carrier to consider a 99 seater aircraft for operations if their courage fails them with the 174/189 seaters on potential new routes? Without knowing the detail JetBlue seem to have this done right with the ERJ 190 series aircraft?

The 190 and ORK are a match made in heaven. Its a very, very effecient aircraft, seat 100 in more comfort than many widebodies, has very low fuel burn and only need two hosties. So Tom if you wnat to buy me a few 190s....my brithday is comming up soon.:ok: Promise Ill do CATII just for you!

I really am of the opinion that the CAA have lost the plot, they are clueless, they do not go after business and by all accounts show, at best, total apathy for new business (EZY) or at worst distain (Long haul).

Honestly if a few of us on here got the airport for six months.......AT THE VERY LEAST there would be serious efforts at pulling NW/DL/CO/Globespan or whoever. I would love to see flyBE at ORK as well, along with more regional UK frequencies and destinations.

One daily service to MAN/BHX na d a half arsed EI schedule is a joke.

[riptack]

I think Brian made a good point about JetBlue, EI should consider a smaller jet option. They seem to have left go of regional operations and focused on DUB and a little on ORK in recent years. But seeing as they only have bases in Ireland it seems unwise to not utilise regional airports more for both feeder traffic and short haul routes.

In fairness to RE they have opened a lot of routes from ORK giving us more direct flights. However the ATR is only going to get you so far. For example cities like Madrid would probably be better served by a smaller (99 seats) jet.

TERMINAL
I don't understand why the people of Cork aren't more p'd off about the expenditure on a new airport that is only currently meeting the demand. A few weeks ago I was in the departures lounge early in the morning and couldn't help noticing how packed it was. I know it was near xmas and peak time but its new!!

[ryan2000]

It seems that Air South West are all set to launch Newquay Cork for the Summer. At last something for the CAA to celebrate.

[Tom the Tenor]

Good news about Air Southwest. Cead mile failte go Corcaigh! Nice little airline and nice Dash 8s. Hope they do well. How are they in LVPs - CAT I/CATII?

It might have to do with it being winter time but have heard that an American Challeger biz jet that arrived today is being allowed parking for no less than about 5 nights at Cork Airport! A good little earner for the CAA!

Off to Madrid in the mornin' with she who must be obeyed. Who would have thought it just a few short years ago - Madrid from Cork? How bad for Cork Airport! The EI892 might be even up to the airbridge tomorrow morning! If she is there will be a full report!

[Hey there]

Am I alone in suspecting Ryanair have screwed up big time with Cork and would love to get off the Dublin route? Sure they've added a fifth, but at a time of day which will only rob from their other service and Arann's last rotation. They are clearly struggling to get good loadfactors as they seem to always have fares for 5 or 10 euros including all charges, so I suspect there simply isnt the market for this sort of capacity on the route. By my back of the envelope, 70 737 sectors per week is around 675,000 seats per year, plus Arann on around 250,000 seats, but the market is still no more than 500,000 per year, even with giveaway fares pushing growth.
The script must have assumed Arann would throw in the towel sooner than now but they seem to be doing ok, certainly down on last year but still pretty high loads on many of the ATR flights I have used in the last few months, and not necessarily cheap either.

[brian_dromey]

I think you are almost certainly corrrect , heythere. I imagine FR though RE would have pulled an EasyJet and fecked off long before now.

IIRC RE did reduce frequencies quite dramatically after teh initial announcement of FR on the route. But they seem to be doing fine as they are back up to seven daily flights (from 4 at the lowest point, IIRC). That was certainly not part of the FR plan. And as you so rightly point out, REs fares are not exactly the bargains FRs are.

It would appear that the short check-in times (as short as 10-15mins in reality) ticket flexibility, coffee and newspapers have kept the business traveller loyal. Im sure the fact that the walk to FRs A gates at DUB is a good 5-10 minutes longer than RE's dosent do too much harm to RE either!

[ryan2000]

Many people find taking the train less stressful. Maybe if Ryanair could be more flexible with Domestic services they might get more train users to switch. The emphasis on checking in 2 hrs before departure is a huge turn off. Maybe allowing people to change flights without incurring massive extra charges might also help.
Aer Arann might be still on the route but Ryanair have very very big cash reserves so I'd expect them to stay and the evening departures from Dublin and Cork should generate new business during the summer months.
CAA must be hoping that both carriers stay on the route as if either pulls out it will almost certainly lead to substantial negative growth at Cork for 2007 in view of their failure to attract any significant new business.

[CCR]

You can check in as late as 40 mins prior to departure with Ryanair and only 30 mins before departure with Aer Arann who can be quite flexible on check-in times.

[Charlie Roy]

Also if you have Ryanair's priority boarding (and hand luggage only) you just have to be at the security gate 30 min before the flight. (Even less I imagine if the security guy is in a good mood....)

[ryan2000]

That's true but the perception among many members of the public is that you need to be there 2 hrs beforehand. Ryanair highlight that when booking. There is also a perception that the journey from City Centre to City Centre is the same length by train.
I much prefer the plane but the overwhelming majority are still using trains. A clever marketing initiative might change things.

[840]

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.

[ryan2000]

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.

[en2r]

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!

[johnref]

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.

[riptack]

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

[Charlie Roy]

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....

[riptack]

... 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:

[Rallye EI-BFP]

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

[Angry Rebel]

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.

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!

[anna_list]

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.

[ryan2000]

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.

[Tom the Tenor]

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!

[840]

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.

[hafez]

What were the loads like on the madrid flights TTT?

[Angry Rebel]

_
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....

[Eh Hello?]

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?

[riptack]

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:

[Titan Airways]

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.

[riptack]

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!

[Titan Airways]

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?

[Titan Airways]

Cork Airport debt issue almost settled, 19/02/07:
An ultimate resolution to the debt issue in Cork Airport is, it seems, finally being agreed upon.
The Airport had been saddled with a €220 million debt after Martin Cullen, the minister for transport went back on Minister Séamus Brennan's commitment in 2003 that the Cork Airport Authority (CAA) would start off debt free and all debt would be absorbed into the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA).
The issue of who would pay the cost of Cork's new Terminal, Multi-storey car park and improved road network had been dragging on for over a year.
But, it seems with elections looming, the government has ordered the Dublin Airport Authority to pay €120 million of the debt, leaving the CAA to clear the remaining €100 million. The airport has begun redesigning its business plan to eradicate this debt.
This is still not a satisfactory resolution in the eyes of many after Séamus Brennan's original pledge for a debt free Cork Airport Authority, and it is perceived that the move is designed to soften the blow coming up to the elections.

[Charlie Roy]

€100 million? This is disastrous news :{
If anyone is organising a protest march let me know so that I can book flights home :(

[ryan2000]

According to reliable sources the board has decided to reject the offer

[mark_heg]

Doesn't the DAA get enough from its Duty free abroad, the sale of the Great Southern Hotel et al. Was in Dubai recently and they have a massive Duty free, now doesn't the DAA have a big stake there and other large Duty Free's abroad?? hmmm Shouldnt Cork get a slice of this wealth at all?? It's a farce from start to finish, Cork should get a debt free airport and also the DAA should keep its nose out its affairs permanently so that it can operate independantly. There is far too much politics involved in the running of Cork Airport. Debt free is the only way to go and to get out from the clutches of the DAA completely!

[Tom the Tenor]

Yes, the Irish government's proposed half assed attempt to get the super profitable Dublin Airport Authority to shoulder just over half the massive Euro 220 million Cork Airport debt is intolerable. Not only the airport but all of Cork must now stand shoulder to shoulder against this farce and stitch up which if goes through will quite likely kill off Cork Airport for well into the future. Do not forget how well organised the Shannon lobby has been down the years in protecting their interests like with the stopover so take a lesson out of their book and make yourselves heard with the politicians in this general election year. The local Cork government TDs (MPs) in Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats must not be left off the hook and must be asked for their opinion on how a Cork Airport with a proposed Euro 100 million debt can put together any kind of credible business plan for the years ahead. In such circumstances it is all but impossible to see how the situation can work out well for Cork Airport.

A Cork Airport candidate for the General Election must not yet be ruled out as a possibility due to the gravity of what all of Cork and not just the airport may now be facing.

Aerfort Chorcai - Tabhar aire! (Cork Airport - Be on guard!)

[Tom the Tenor]

The Cork Airport debt issue has at last fully made the national broadcast media today with the topic discussed hotly and at length on the lunchtime news programme on RTE Radio 1. Cork Senator John Minihane (not TD) of the government Progressive Democrats party was scathing in his criticism of his Fianna Fail colleagues's proposed solution to the DAA of splitting the airport debt's close to down the middle with Cork bearing Euro 100 million Euro of the Euro 220 million debt.

Earlier in the day the topic was also well covered on Cork local radio, 96FM. What a contradiction there was between two Cork government deputies, Mininster for Enterprise, Mr Micheal Mairtin, TD fairly meakly supporting the Government approach and some minutes later fellow Fianna Fail depty, Mr Noel O'Flynn, TD arguing proudly enough for a strong Cork Airport and even wanting the remaining airbridges to be put in without any more delay. I had to warm to that suggestion! :D

As can be predicted there has been little word today from Mr Cullen, the transport Minister and nothing either from the big shots at the Cork Airport Authority nor the Dublin Airport Authority. There has been one sort of sensation thas has emerged today in that it seems the DAA are keen on selling around 30 acres of land near runway 25 at Cork. The thing about it is that they want to do it over even the heads of the Cork Airport Authority without their consent to the deal! How's that for sneakiness? A form of asseting stripping by any other name?

If the DAA feel the need to asset strip Cork Airport so much why dont they sell off the area around runway 17, get their millions of Euro, and then let Cork put in another 4000 feet on runway 25. At least then there might be a chance of a decent length runway and maybe better chance of installing a CATIII ILS for low viz operations.

[WOWBOY]

NEW ROUTE:
Cork to Newquay
with Air southwest.
The new flights start on May 4 and tickets go on sale today. They will operate three days a week on Monday, Friday and Sunday throughout May, with a Wednesday flight being introduced from June.
Flights leave Newquay at 11.20am and arrive in Cork at 12.10pm, giving a flight time of less than an hour. Flights leave Cork at 12.55 and arrive in Newquay at 13.45.

[Titan Airways]

Are the DAA serious? Presumably they are referring to the land ear-marked for the cargo apron at the airport. They should go take a running jump for themselves.

They'd have a battle on their hands if they wanted to extend runway 25. There are roads at either end, and closing the back one would mean I'd have to get up 10mins earlier in the morning:*

[CCR]

The board of the Cork Airport Authority should resign over the attempt to force the terminal debt on the CAA and also over the attempt by the DAA to sell the land bank by runway 25 (thus preventing any future runway extension). I hope the Cork electorate will remember this 'stitch up' in the general election!!!

[en2r]

This is outrageous. Not only are they landing us with a €100 million debt, they are selling 25 acres of valuable land which was earmarked for a cargo village. They should easily get €50-60million for the land, or even more if there is a bidding war. Shannon got to be debt free and keep it's much larger land banks. Dublin got the Great Southern Hotels chain, the stakes in the foreign airports as well as Aer Rianta's overseas duty free business. What has Cork got, a huge debt that will probably take decades to pay off, and no chance to improve profitability since Dublin have sold off the remaining empty land from underneath them and pocketed all the cash. If I were the CAA, I would try and get a high court injunction preventing them from selling the land.

[ryan2000]

Change is in the air by the Banks of the Lee. It must be very difficult to run an airport with this constant political haggling and media scrutiny.

[Outoftheblue22]

I see Air Southwest are starting flights from Cork to Newquay in Cornwall

[Tom the Tenor]

The news about Air Southwest is very welcome news for a Cork Airport very much in the news at the moment. The days chosen by Airsouthwest - Mondays, Fridays, Sundays and with with Wednesdays to follow later are great. Aer Lingus would be wise to take note with their new token Cork - Manchester service - how foolish not having a Friday flight and yet on other days of the week there will be up to three Manchester flights with two from bmi baby and the Aer Lingus service.

If a tidy little airline like Air Southwest can grasp the significance of a Friday flight for Cork beats me why EI cannot do the same.

Cork Airport is very much in the media again today with Minister Cullen on the offensive saying that an independant Cork Airport is getting the sale of the century having a debt of only Euro 100 million! The government and DAA spindoctors are working hard to keep a leash on Cork at all costs. Our Cabient Minister from Cork, Mr Micheal Martin, is also having a go saying that the chairman of the Cork Airport Authority, Mr Joe Gantley supports the government's plan on how to deal with the airport debt and there is also supposed to be some confusion on whether the CAA have yet sent a letter to the Governement rejecting it's proposal to saddle Cork with Euro 100 million debt as had been reported in the media yesterday.

Minister Cullen is supposed to be announcing a big regional airports package for Ireland today and there is talk that Waterford Airport are to receive funds to widen and lengthen their runway. How genorously sporting of him! Pity Cork did not have a Mininster like Mr Cullen!

Instead Cork and Cork Airport gets Mininster Micheal Martin!

[en2r]

2 daily Bmi Baby flights to Manchester?
Bmi Baby has daily flights to Manchester. Is this going to change?

[Titan Airways]

Knock today received a grant of €27 million from the venerable Martin Cullen "under the new Capital Expenditure Grant Scheme for Regional Airports". How nice of him.
Am I allowed to link to a full story? If so I'll put up the link.

There's rumour alright that bmi Baby will increase to twice daily for, I think, 2 days in the week.

[Charlie Roy]

Ya Tom you're allowed post a link to and/or selectively quote from a news article that is not advertising.

Regional airports get €100 million windfall (if I've done my sums right):
http://www.rte.ie/business/2007/0221/airports.html

[Titan Airways]

To that end, here's the link to the Knock article: http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story_business_island.asp?j=211093294&p=zyyx94xxx

[NABLAG]

Now lads, ye wouldn't begrudge Knock and Waterford a few million ?

For years Waterford had to put up with the crumbs left over from the other airports. About time a Minister for Transport went a little way towards evening things up !

[NABLAG]

Waterford will be a shorter road distance for all those diversions from Cork when the new runway is operational.

So really its good news for Cork people !

[asianfly]

Good point NABLAG. I would much rather be diverted to Waterford than Shannon . Interestingly, Waterford has the potential to do a lot of damage to ORK going forward once they have a half decent runway. If FR don't get their way with the CAA management, then they could always operate flights from Suirside. Not hampered by debt, overstaffing, or dodgy weather, and within striking distance of a large populous hinterland, Waterford could fit in nicely with FR's plans. They could even have it renamed Ireland South or Waterford-Cork Airport. Cork folk would, I imagine, be much more receptive to traveling to Waterford than Shannon.

[aidanf]

(Pedantic mode on)
according to AA route-planner:
Shannon Airport to Cork = 78 miles
Waterford Airport to Cork = 79.5 miles
... so no actual saving in distance there.

However (pedantic mode off) the Cork to Waterford road is probably a better road for most of the journey, and provides more opportunities for overtaking that feckin tractor that just pulled out in front of you and ain't going nowhere fast for another 20 miles.

[ryan2000]

According to the media there is a serious split in the Cork Board over this weeks developments.

[MarkD]

Cork County Council and City Council should pony up the cash so that the County can CPO that land ASAP.

[CCR]

Why shouldn't the government not pay for this state infrastructure?
They announced as part of the National Development Plan that they were investing in Derry Airport in January. This week we get the announcement that they are investing in all the other regional airports including over €20 million for the Minister's local airport (Waterford). Not sure why they want to screw Cork.
The board of the CAA should resign and could well be accused of trading recklessly with a €100 million debt being put on a relatively small regional airport.
If Fianna Fail don't resolve this fairly before the election, I hope they will lose many of their Cork seats in the forthcoming general election.:=

[Ger Cork]

A few comments regarding Cork Airport, and I am glad to hear that the management team realise that a lot of potential is there for more route expansion from Cork to a number of European destinations which is exactly what Cork needs. What Cork also needs are more carriers to serve a number of new destinations; the likes of Lufthansa, SAS, Brussels Airlines, Air France, Austrian Airlines and even the likes of perhaps Hapag Lloyd and FlyGlobespan and not just relying on the likes of Aer Lingus and Ryanair.

Recently too, the management stated they want to knock down the old terminal which I happen to agree with, perhaps to make more apron space which it needs for bigger aircraft to use parked nose-in. Don’t be surprised if the management want to extend the new terminal out over the old car park in front of the old terminal instead of going the other way where DHL and TNT have their buildings as there are no immediate plans for a new cargo village for these building to knocked. What Cork Airport also needs are Proper Instrument Landing system (Category III) to make it up to more international standard, an extra 2000ft runway extension and above all a parallel taxiway.
The sooner too Open Skies comes in the better for Cork Airport and the airport can attract the likes of Delta, American Airlines and United Airlines. The demand is there and scheduled transatlantic flights are what Cork Airport needs. Getting back to new European destinations from Cork; Brussels, Milan, Stockholm, Glasgow, Zurich, Bordeaux, Vienna, Frankfurt, Munich and Copenhagen would be at the top of my list plus a few more later.

[ryan2000]

Ger Cork,

It would be great to see the likes of SAS and Air France in Cork but the reality is that they are not going to take Aerlingus and Ryanair on at one of their Irish bases. Foreign airlines are coming under increasing pressure even in Dublin. For instance Alitalia and Finnair no longer operate year round services and Lufthansa's operation has also been scaled back.

If Cork is to grow it will be Aerlingus , Ryanair or both that will drive it. Transatlantic is also a possibility and I hear that there are serious negotiations underway with 2 carriers in relation to JFK and BOS. I hope that Cork people will put their money where their mouth is and support the new services if they materialise.

[EGHDKGHDSLG]

Hi, Am I allowed post a link to an article about the Airport board being split?


The rules for posting links are in the stickies at the top of the forum. Advertising and links to spotter websites are amongst the links not allowed.

[johnrizzo2000]

I didnt know LH had reduced flights ex DUB??? They went 3 daily last year, up from 2 daily. EI and FR will stay as the main operators in ORK. The only possibility would be WX/AF to CDG!

[ryan2000]

Refering to the fact that some years ago they flew to several German Cities. The growth at Dublin is being driven by Ryanair and Aerlingus. The fact that both of them have a base at Cork will probably scare off other low costs although Easyjet came very close to signing a major deal in early 2005 involving several UK and Continental Cities.

[johnrizzo2000]

Oh, I understand. I though LH was reducing services or something. I doubt AF, KL or many other airlines will begin ORK service, with FR and EI lying in wait. I think ORK should be pushing for another A320 to be based in ORK, and routes like GLA, MXP, GVA, FRA etc could be served.

[ryan2000]

Major meeting of staff at Cork on Monday night and another board meeting on Thursday. NO doubt the media will be covering same with renewed interest.

[en2r]

Aer Arann will introduce free online check in on the Cork-Dublin route only from March 5th. No doubt this will prove popular with Ryanair passengers who are currently charged €3 each way for the privilidge of checking in online.

[RE72]

PAX also only need to be at the gate -20 with online check-In

As Online checkin is another positive, does this mean, RE will be "8 TIMES BETTER" on the DUB-ORK route.

Anyone think They'll Be able to sustain an 8th Daily Departure by Summer??

[westcorkman]

Lets not forget that the airport land is zoned for Airport use, Lets hope that Cork County Council very strictly apply that criteria - therefore the land can only be used for purposes directly linked to the operation of the airport, such as cargo handling. There should be No question of it being sold off to highest bidder to use for any thing else. Cork County Councillors please Note.

[ryan2000]

Mounting political pressure in advance of board meeting on Thursday and Taoiseach's Visit to Cork on Friday.

[Tom the Tenor]

Any more updates on the latest FR rumors? It was doing the rounds again yesterday; then again, with just one based aeroplane in Cork, the place is all ways ripe for yet another Ryanair rumor. Getting a bit late now for the summer schedule '07 if FR were to go ahead with any new expansion from Cork?

There might be announcement from Bertie when he comes to Cork tomorrow for a bit of roasting!?

[840]

It was suggested in the Ryanair thread that all aircraft are allocated until September now

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3150780&postcount=223

I'm not sure I could see MOL doing Bertie a favour by leaving him to announce any expansion anyway.

[ryan2000]

Cork Airport "Board" were due to meet today to discuss recent developments, no white smoke yet.

[en2r]

Titan Airways Post 160 was right. BMI Baby are fighting back against Aer Lingus by introducing a second daily flight from Cork to both Birmingham and Manchester on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That means we will have 3 flights per day to Manchester on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However the extra frequency is only from 17 April-22 May and before returning on the 18th of September and continuing until the end of the timetable period. How will Aerlingus compete with 9 times weekly flights to both Birmingham and Manchester when they only offer four and three flights weekly. Would it not make more sense to offer daily flights to one city and scrap the other? For example the MWFS flights to Birmingham could go to Manchester instead leaving the TTS flights to be operated on a W pattern by a Dublin aircraft. Or else the Dublin aircraft could operate a W pattern to Birmingham instead of Manchester tying in with the other 4 flights of the Cork based plane. Surely it would make more financial sense for Aer Lingus?? What do others think?

[jet2_at_blk]

Why should a National airline be forced out of a route from it's own territory for a small, subsidary of a low cost airline?

[Charlie Roy]

jet2_at_blk

Well considering recent history BMI baby have been on the Manchester and Birmingham routes before Aer Lingus.

Aer Lingus' attempts to compete with BMI Baby are disastrously half-hearted and will ultimately cost them a lot of money :ugh:

They could theoretically beat BMI baby off these routes, but certainly not with the miserable schedules they are currently offering.

[hafez]

RTE:

The board of Cork Airport Authority has indicated that it does not accept the terms of a proposal put to the authority by Government which would see it pay €100m of a €220m debt.
In a statement tonight, Cork Airport Authority indicated it would be hiring consultants to enable it to negotiate what it described as satisfactory terms and conditions with the Dublin Airport Authority and Department of Transport.
The disagreement over who should pay the debt at Cork Airport stems from a promise made by then Transport Minister Seamus Brennan in July 2003 that the airport would be debt-free when it gained its independence.
Advertisement
In the statement, the board of CAA said it was not yet in a position to evaluate the proposal from government.
However it said it would be appointing consultants to enable the authority to prepare a business plan and negotiate terms with the DAA and the Department of Transport.
A source close the authority stressed that its statement did not amount to a rejection of the debt payment proposal tabled by the Government.
Wonder what's going to happen!?

[jet2_at_blk]

Absolutely correct!

If they were to have a higher schedule, they would surely be able to compete, and even overthrough BMIBaby on both routes, but at the moment, BMIBaby has the upper hand!

P.S. Surely one of the main reasons why Irish citizens visit Manchester is toattend football matches at Manchester United Football club. I recall being in Manchester airport the morning after a Byer Leverkusen game, and there were more Irish in the terminal than English! The exodus from Ireland to Old Trafford will be a major plus for EI,WW and FR on the Irish routes. If so, why does EI and WW offer flights on Saturdays at bad times. Afternoon flights to MAN is not what the football fans ordered. Surely a morning flight departure from ORK on the Saturday would suit the passengers better.

Anyway, not all the passengers are Manchester United fans!:p

[Charlie Roy]

The consultants will work up a bill of €100 million - hehe ;)

Only joking, I'm glad they are going to fight this!

[ryan2000]

Charlie Roy is correct, the Aerlingus decision to cut MAN to a miserely 3 per week probably led WW to have a go at them in April, May and September. EI half hearted attitude will lose them a fortune on ORK-BHX and ORK-MAN.

[brian_dromey]

To be honest, I see WW becomming stronger and stronger on their BHX and MAN routes. Even local authority officials are booking WW on travel to BHX and MAN, mainly because they do not know EI operate on the route! Add in teh half assed schedule and pretty unremarkable fares, and you have to wonder why EI bother. I remember a time when BHX was 2x dialy with EI on a 146 and MAN was 3x daily with BA on an Avro/ERJ-145. The fares on MAN could be as low as £49IRP! That was with full service as well!

Now that WW are diamond club members there is even less reason to choose EI. What I would love to see is a based BD 319 @ ORK to operate 3x daily LHR and once daily MAN and BHX. With MAN and BHX crews/aircraft doing the second rotation of the day on their route. The 319 could be used for charters at the weekend, and the LHR route would be great for connections to the star alliance, which are woeful from ORK at the minute.

Brian.

[Ger Cork]

I know there is a lot of competition in Dublin; 2 or 3 carriers for a lot of routes but you see the only competition in Cork is in the UK. Are you telling me Aer Lingus have expansion plans to Europe from Cork, where they have enough flights too by the way? What Cork needs now are more carriers like I mentioned e.g. Lufthansa, SAS, Air France and perhaps Alitalia and not two carriers like Aer Shamrock and TaxiAir. But an important thing for Cork now is to put in the four airbridges. Demand and potential for a lot of new routes from Cork to Europe is there, but the marketing department have to go out and secure it. If it is true that Cork Airport are in serious negotiations with at least 2 or 3 of the major American carriers to New York JFK and Boston then that’s fantastic news and that is exactly what Cork needs – I hope it is Delta and either American or United Airlines they are negotiating with and Cork would also need flights to Philadelphia 2 or 3 times a weeks for the summer and also Chicago for 4 flights a week but that’s for another day. Delta and American/United first to New York and Boston would be fantastic perhaps with a 767 and 757. What’s even more important now is that first of all Cork Airport Authority do not sell off 30 or 40 acres of land which is vital for Cork Airports’ future and they demand their share of Great Southern Hotels and Aer Rianta International to pay off the debt and leave them shower of eejits in Dublin to go away.

P.S. I think Joe Gantley should resign too as chairman from the board – bring back Joe O’Connor.

On the issue of the €100million debt the question now is are Cork Airport Authority better off accepting the huge debt getting its full independence from Dublin Airport Authority, having the 40acres of land transferred over to them to decide what they want to do with it either lease out the land for industrial development or perhaps some kind of joint venture with some interested parties – something like the Cork Airport Business Park and not leave DAA get their hands on it. What Cork Airport vitally needs are more flights and more passengers just barely handling 3 million in 2006 Cork perhaps could be handling between 5.7 million passengers per year a lout of potential remains untapped.

If Cork Airport do decide that in its best interests to pay off the debt long-term will they have to increase landing charges which would kill off the airport? I certainly hope not because then you certainly will not attract the major American carriers i.e. Delta, American, United, U.S. Airways, Air Canada when Open Skies comes in and these services are vital to the growth of Cork Airport. By the way will Cork get to be allowed to put in the 4 airbridges as was promised first day? Another option woyuld be to lease out the old-terminal to a lot cost carrier although personally I hope not. What I would like to see is more carriers and more destinations to both Europe and North America. I also hope that fiasco is not forgotten in a few weeks and we lobby intensively like Shannon Airport have done and you can be sure would do it again now as well. Interesting times ahead.

[840]

Within Europe, I find it hard to see much expansion coming from outside EI, FR and RE.

Yields would be too low on pretty much all routes for foreign flag carriers to touch them. There are a few exceptions. LH could probably make a bit of money on a Frnkfurt connection, but they probably have more profitable things to do with their aircraft and Frankfurt slots. AF could attempt a route to somewhere in western France (Bordeaux perhaps) as a way of squeezing a bit of extra utilization out of an aircraft. If WX started DUB-AMS, they would probably take on ORK-AMS as well, which could mean a CDG route from them, but at the moment, DUB-AMS isn't in their plans.

The two possible exceptions could be flag carriers from the Baltic states who could make a go of serving their expat populations in Cork and as there are no direct connections to Scandinavia and because they could feed into Baltic destinations, SAS could just be tempted.

Otherwise, you're looking at LoCos. It would be great to see one of the German LoCos come in, but would it get a heavy response from Ryanair?

We're probably stuck with trying to get the exiting carriers to expand their operations in Cork.

I don't know how much use there is discussing route expansion from Cork though, when we still don't have anyone coming in to take over the Glasgow route.

[JDB1052]

Has Arann's "7 wonders" ad which promotes all that is positive abount Aranns service without directly mentioning Ryanair? First the weekend papers carry a big 14.99 ad from Ryan for Dublin to Cork, then today the Indo has a "Fly Ryanair instead of Aer Arann" ad, comparing ryans "9.99" fare with Aranns 25euro fare. Nobody seems to have told their pricing people - 14.99 is still the lowest I can find, so a bit of a knee jerk there. Then Ryanair present "7 reasons to fly Ryanair not Arann". Some are obvious - jet v prop, reliability etc, but they claim first and last flights in each direction (wrong - Arann have both at the moment and stay last out of Dublin when the schedules change for the summer), Ryanair also push "online check-in & priority boarding available" - they fail to say that they charge for this whilst Arann now offer free online checking and have been doing pre-allocated seating for years. Finally they say "Now 5 flights per day" - not true until the end of March. Pickey, I know, but they really must have struggled with the words for this ad.

The smart money is on Ryanair expecting Arann to have gone by now. I reckon five 180 seaters each way per day depends on killing Arann first. In reaction to Ryanairs fifth, Arann seem to have done some rescheduling to improve their early evening departures but otherwise seem to be plodding on as before.

Good on ya!

[brian_dromey]

Believe it or not there are situations where FR are more expensive than RE, and the benifits of a jet on such a short sector are doubtful. 5 daily to DUB on a 189 seater is utter madness.

FR must be bleeding serious cash on the route. RE are, as you say, plodding along just fine, offering great service and are actually committed to teh ORK-DUB route. FR would have been much better off doing 3x daily on DUB and 2/3x daily on LGW.

As far as I am concerned FR dont give a damn about ORK, only keeping it free of otehr carriers. I HATE, HATE, HATE FR. When will they gie up this madness on the DUB route?

Brian.

[aidanf]

On a Cork v Shannon 'Ryanair' note, meself and the family have to regularly travel to the UK. Most of the time we've been forced to go ex-Shannon as it can represent a saving of Euro 300+, but after doing in again last Saturday I've taken the decision that this was the last time. Shannon has truly gone to the dogs .... the place was absolutely filthy in the main departures holding area. Now, I'm a fairly filthy fecker meself, but this place was really crawling. Furthermore the screens were saying to 'wait in lounge' while our flight was actually boarding!! It was only by pure chance we realised that the screens were wrong - how hard is it to get this right! From here on we'll be using Aer Arann - few more quid, but at least it's from Cork.

[tashkurgan]

As a fairly regular traveller on the Cork Dublin route from the 80s I can safely state that the RE product on the route is fairly basic and given a choice of a 737-800 or an ATR-42/72 I will take the FR 737-800 everytime. And most business travellers I have met who experienced a winter approach and landing in an ATR will agree with me.

[Bremer]

Hi,
New to this but long time reader. I live in Bremen but come from Cork. Can any of you confirm rumours that are going around here that Ryanair are about to announce a route from Cork to Bremen? :bored:

[Angry Rebel]

I highly doubt it.

See numerous previous comments regarding Ryanairs lack of meaningful commitment to Cork.

[Tom the Tenor]

Interesting little rumor all right. A Bremen-Cork would have a few things in it's favour. Such a route could be operated from either the Bremen base or from Cork if more aircraft were despateched to us in any proposed expansion. This gives more flexibility to begin with and I guess that Bremen is far enough away from both Hahn and Weeze/NRN not to compromise Ryanair's Shannon operations.

Might be a good one to Bremen at around 3 a week? How many of yez remember reading the name of Bremen in old medium and long wave radios. There is a certain sort of rightness about it but let us believe it when we see it.

Hmm, let's see.

[Charlie Roy]

I guess that Bremen is far enough away from both Hahn and Weeze/NRN not to compromise Ryanair's Shannon operations

And also FR are axing Shannon to Hahn, but I still cannot imagine a ORK - BRE service ever seeing the light of day.

[johnrizzo2000]

''I know there is a lot of competition in Dublin; 2 or 3 carriers for a lot of routes but you see the only competition in Cork is in the UK. Are you telling me Aer Lingus have expansion plans to Europe from Cork, where they have enough flights too by the way? What Cork needs now are more carriers like I mentioned e.g. Lufthansa, SAS, Air France and perhaps Alitalia and not two carriers like Aer Shamrock and TaxiAir. But an important thing for Cork now is to put in the four airbridges. Demand and potential for a lot of new routes from Cork to Europe is there, but the marketing department have to go out and secure it. If it is true that Cork Airport are in serious negotiations with at least 2 or 3 of the major American carriers to New York JFK and Boston then that’s fantastic news and that is exactly what Cork needs – I hope it is Delta and either American or United Airlines they are negotiating with and Cork would also need flights to Philadelphia 2 or 3 times a weeks for the summer and also Chicago for 4 flights a week but that’s for another day. Delta and American/United first to New York and Boston would be fantastic perhaps with a 767 and 757''


I highly doubt UA is considering service to ORK. I'd say the most likely US airline's for service to ORK would be DL and CO. CO would be a great addition to ORK, due to the strenght of their EWR operations, but I'd say its a good while off. PHL and ORD are not going to happen ex ORK, as not many US carriers are interested in 3/4 weekly seasonal flights. Look for JFK or EWR, and BOS, although BOS is a very long shot!! If GSM proves a success ex Knock, we may see ORK-JFK/EWR service, but not for the forseeable future.

[ryan2000]

Cork hasn't secured any new flights for 2007 apart from the Central Wings Warsaw service and some additional flights to other Polish Cities. These are almost certainly due to demand from Polish migrant workers.
Talk of Alitalia, SAS and Lufthansa appearing on the aproach to 17/35 is simply fantasy.
These legacy carriers are only interested in flying to Dublin and will almost certainly not even consider Cork once they hear that it is an Aerlingus and Ryanair base.
Why not entice EI and FR to base additional aircraft there, that's a far more likely prospect.

[jbsharpe]

I know the topic of feeling let-down by the design of the new terminal has been thrashed to death, but after flying in today from Birmingham, I feel like a mild rant...

I flew over with the missus yesterday for the United Champions League game, the lunchtime EI flight to BHX - airbridge in operation, which was nice! Escalator down from the gate to the airbridge too, so all good...

However today was a different story. This time we were flying WW. (In an aside, the approach was blustery enough, only emerging from the clouds just after passing CIT on approach to 17, but the touchdown was very smooth in fairness!)

We reached the stand in fairly heavy rain. They opened the front door, but since I was in the back row, I was hoping for the rear door also... Sure enough, along trundled a stairs and the stewardess opened up. However no movement... word filtered back that while the stairs was there, there was no despatcher on hand so she couldn't let us disembark. Can't have helped her 25 minute turnaround! "They're probably couldn't be arsed stand out in the rain!" muttered the stewardess somewhat bitterly.

We all piled out the front door and got to the barbaric tower - and sure enough there were two fluorescent-jacket-wearing despatchers standing out of the rain. The stairs were absolutely soaking and very slippy. All in all, a highly unsatisfactory arrival. Whatever about the inertia of the staff, the design is just ridiculous.

As I said at the outset, I realise this has been discussed at length, but I felt the need to rant...

JBS

[MarkD]

I think there is a lot of speculation about TA ex ORK that originates from two sources:

1. People's imagination - which of course would end half the threads on pprune if it was a disqualifier
2. Cork calling around airlines who are too polite not to simply say "are you kidding? We heard about Ryan International/Slatterys you know - and oil is still $50-60 a barrel." and slam down the phone.

Now god knows I'd love to see more direct routes home but if ORK want to get TA ex ORK they should be talking to flyglobespan about something out of Cardiff or Bristol in a similar vein to NOCs services. They might see something happen a lot quicker than a UA 757 on ORK's ramp.

[brian_dromey]

We all piled out the front door and got to the barbaric tower - and sure enough there were two fluorescent-jacket-wearing despatchers standing out of the rain. The stairs were absolutely soaking and very slippy. All in all, a highly unsatisfactory arrival. Whatever about the inertia of the staff, the design is just ridiculous.

Not meaning to be smart,but how do you propose that the design be improved? While I will agree that the flooring in the towers is nasty and can be slippery apart from adding some form of heavy duty matting there is not a lot which can be done....apart from installing the airbridges!

Interestingly WW dont seem to use the airbridge at ORK, and even more strangely they dont use the rear doors for disembarkation either....at least in my experience. That siad they are still provide a much better schedule on ORK-MAN/BHX than EI do.

Brian.

[parsi]

With due respect - Cork has a fairly high rainfall and the flooring should have been specced for that - it is slippy in the rain and that doesn't help perceptions..

I came down from Dublin last week on Aer Arann and unfortunately 2 crew members were deadheading behind me so I got to listen to them exchanging scuttlebutt with the on-duty crew for most of the journey. Now I know the names of the foolish people in Aer Arann and who has been reported for what etc etc. Loadings were heavy on both outward and return journeys.

I did notice that air travel involves a lot of buses now -bus to the plane in Cork, bus to the plane in Dublin, bus off the plane in Lux, bus to the plane in Lux, bus to the plane in Fra (curiously Lufthansa don't have a row 13 in their A319 ), bus to the plane in Dub.

[Charlie Roy]

Sorry if this is old news, but I've just noticed that XL Airways will fly Cork - Lanzarote on Thursdays from May.

[Tom the Tenor]

Maybe it is a sign of things to come but there is an XL 737-800 overnighting at Cork tonight due out in the morning on a rugby charter to Rome for the Italy Vs Ireland rugger came. A Monarch A300 is also due in at aroud 0845 later today from Gatwick on another Rome charter for the big game along with a Hawker 800 bizjet due out around the same time. A nice few extra pax there for Cork Airport.

There has been a few other good bizjet movements at Cork also in the last few days so much so that on Monday or Tuesday a visiting Challenger 604 had to reposition to the remote parking area at snn airport for parking. This must surely support the case for more bizjet parking being made available at Cork Airport. I mean, you cant lose with it, can you? Money for jam! :}

[ryan2000]

Tell that to the OCC Tom

[parsi]

Is it just me or is the design fairly brutal ? There is very little directional signage and what is there is colour coded so on level 1 it's blue and unilluminated. The carparks in town have plenty of illuminated yellow signs pointing the way. Interestingly it said level 2 was full but yet there was at least a dozen spaces...I note that the intercoms are still "temporarily" out of order.

The walk across to the lifts was like the Arctic today and what genius designed a covered walkway with slatted sides ideal for the rain and sleet to blow through ?

[en2r]

Some CAA Stats for 2006 for routes from Cork:
Gatwick 323,278 +145,172
Heathrow 425,516 -8,630
Stansted 290,569 -147,815
Belfast 42,858 +2,368
Birmingham 116,866 +10,153
Bristol 19,943 +5493
Cardiff 20,672 -8,686
Durham 26,015 +9,377
Edinburgh 47,813 +8,484
Glasgow 9,336 -2321
Leeds Bradford 6,788 -951
Liverpool 77,941 +11,381
Manchester 75,871 -36,788
Newcastle 31,732 +27,409
Newquay 6,219 +6,219
Southampton 13,793 -1,421

Interesting to see that big drop in Cork-Stansted was almost equal to the big increase in Cork-Gatwick. However a decrease of over 10,000 passengers on the crucial Cork-London route, but still well over 1,000,000 passengers. Also a big drop on Cork-Manchester. The Aer Arann routes seem to be doing alright with Edinburgh in particular up by over 20% despite Ryanair starting Shannon-Edinburgh.

[ryan2000]

The plans for the new terminal designed by Jacobs provided for airbridges, covered walkways, adequate floor space etc.

It is obvious that a hatchet job was done on the original design by Aer Rianta/DAA in order to save money. This coupled with the debt issue means we are now left with an Irish solution to the politicians problem by the Banks of The Lee

[aidanf]

Noticed in the Sunday Times that Aer Rianta may benefit from 450m+ from the sale of their stake in BHX. Adding this to all of their recent sell-offs surely EICK could expect a better deal on the financing of the airport which THEY (dublin) commissioned?

[akerosid]

I know we've been having a discussion here about the potential of flights from the US to ORK/vv, but what's the regulatory situation. Once Open Skies is approved, as now looks likely on Thursday/Friday :ok:, what are the consequences for ORK. DUB is tied to SNN in terms of being 3:1 until 2009, but are there any restrictions on ORK? I don't think so, but can anyone confirm?

Assuming there aren't, I agree that a Fly Globespan service (or similar would be ideal); indeed, Y2 can now fly to/from ORK and the US as often as it wishes, using 738s, 757s or whatever it wants. I do think ORK should be of interest to some US carriers operating '57s; I'm sure there is quite a considerable "Corkonian diaspora" in the NE of the US - BOS, NYC, even PHL, so it should be worth one of them having a look and with all due respect to Y2, having a "name", with the marketing power, not to mention the connectivity of CO/DL/US at their hubs, should be quite a boost to Cork.

[gaelgeoir]

Not sure if the interim Ireland/U.S. arrangement retains all previous elements other than the DUB/SNN ratio. If it does, the only T/A service permitted to U.S. or Irish carriers from Cork is on a charter basis. One further piece of info.- Minister Cullen has continued to refer to the originally-planned expiry date of the interim agreement (March 2008) as being retained, despite the delay in concluding the E.U./U.S. agreement.

[akerosid]

As far as I am aware, there is an annex to the proposed OS deal relating to the stopover and the phaseout period. So, apart from that, every other aspect of the OPEN SKIES deal takes precedence over existing deals, which cease to have effect. Thus, any limitation on ORK re using Irish aircraft or having to operate them as charters would seem to be out the window?

That said and in reference to your second point, there is nothing to stop Ireland and the US deciding that they no longer wanted to go ahead with the deal agreed in Nov 05 and that the 18 month "phaseout" period applied from then. In that case, we would have full open skies from next March. From Cork's vantage point, that makes life a lot easier - no limitations, so silly rules, no more nonsense. :ok:

[ryan2000]

No more lame excuses either as to why Cork can't have transatlantic flights.

[mark_heg]

Hmmm now that the open skies is sorted out completely when can we see some US carriers taking up positions at ORK, AA is a likey one with a 757 from BOS to ork and maybe DL from JFK to ORK or CO from Newark to ORK, that would be a great service! Any thoughts.

[840]

I'd tend to be a little pessimistic about what we're likely to see immediately. The only one of those that I would see having a 50% chance of happening is Co to Newark.

Knowing the local population, they will continue to trek up to Shannon because they want to fly to New York, not Newark...

[gaelgeoir]

By the look of how things are set to develop- see Dublin Airport thread, we (those of us living in the Western or Southern regions) had all better get used to the idea of trekking to Dublin to fly transatlantic. What a pain that's going to be! Let's hope that regional Irish airports get some share of the "Open Skies" goodies, otherwise it won't have done much good to the half of the nation's population living within driving distance of Knock, Shannon and Cork.

[en2r]

All out war continues. FR's latest press release highlights the fact that RE have had 49 cancellations in the period Feb06-Feb07 while FR have only had 9. When you consider RE operate 7 flights a day, 49 flights cancelled over a whole year doesn't sound much.

Things have gone quiet at Cork recently. Any word on any new routes for the winter season??

[ryan2000]

Aerlingus met CAA recently but no word on new routes from them. Hopefully the 4 320's will stay based at Cork for Winter 2007/8 but I wouldn't bet on it.

[840]

There are a number of destinations that aren't bookable for the Winter - Alicante, Birmingham, Faro, Manchester, Nice.

While a few have been cancelled for the Winter in previous years, it would suggest that options are being kept open as there's almost an aircraft's worth of rotations not bookable.

[Tom the Tenor]

A pal of the family is due out to SXF in the mornin' and even as late as Monday evening the outbound fare less taxes is just Euro 29. Kind of troubling when the fare is so relatively low? Mind you, the reduction to just two a week to SXF from four a week in the period from January to March does not help due to lack of flexibility with days. Sure, it is a matter of managing the scarce resources by EI but you would think they would have at least left Berlin at 3 a week to give it every chance of working for the summer and that it will not be an opportunity lost?

The mess over Manchester has all ready been discussed. Let us hope that the EI planners in Dublin give a bit more credible thought to Cork once this summer is out of the way and that a better plan is sorted for the autumn and winter season.

For the summer IT season on Sundays it looks like both an Astraeus 757 and Monarch 757 should be both sharing the Cork ramp around the same time. Nothing too wrong with that.

Fair play to Aer Arann for plugging away and not yielding to Ryanair. If nothing else Cork people love the underdog in the might of such a foe in the RE vs FR battle! :D Who knows, I might even try DUB myself!

[NC2]

The following article appeared on the Irish Examiner wesbite this afternoon. Could there be an end in sight to the debt issue or is this just more posturing by Fianna Fáil and the PD's before the election?

It does look like politicians are getting a bit rattled about the issue!!

It appears that the attempt by the DAA to sell off of land before the transfer of the assets to the CAA seems to have backfired and is now on hold.


Cork Airport deal 'to reduce debt burden'

The Government is close to ending the row over Cork Airport Authority’s debt, a senior Fianna Fáil politician has said.

Fianna Fáil and the PD’s had faced an election backlash over the huge debt which is currently levied on the Cork Airport Authority (CAA) under the existing takeover plan.

At the moment the authority must carry €100m of the overall €220m debt

However, a senior Fianna Fáil politician predicted today that a revised plan will be announced within weeks.

Deputy Noel O’Flynn also disclosed that the Government is understood to have blocked the sell-off of any more land at Cork Airport, pending an agreement on the takeover by local management.

Deputy O’Flynn said he believes that the proposals being put to cabinet in the coming weeks will “significantly reduce” the financial burden on the new Cork Airport Authority.

Sources indicated land held by Cork Airport will not be sold off in advance of the company being handed over and will be an asset to the new company.


Land in the airport haD been offered for sale or proposal for development recently by the existing body in charge of Cork Airport, Dublin Airport Authority.

Deputy O’Flynn said he believed an “acceptable compromise” had now been identified.

He said: “I am happy that we have stopped the sell off by the Dublin Airport Authority of valuable land holdings in the airport, in advance of the takeover.

“I understand that the land, which is suitable for major development and worth in the region of 130 million, will remain in the ownership of the new Cork Airport Authority as part of the hand-over deal.”

The president of Cork Chamber, Roger Flack, welcomed the proposal, adding that the land holding was a critical factor for the new management company.

ENDS/

[brian_dromey]

Its good to see that the debt thing is being sorted. Its about time. Now the CAA need to get attracting airlines - my list would be

bmi - GLA/LHR
bmibaby - more frewuency BHX/MAN
Aer Lingus/SAS - Scandanavian Destinations
Continental/Delta-JFK/EWR
flyBe/Aer Arann - more frequency to regional UK destinations

Maybe soon!

[en2r]

The first new Aer Arann plane will arrive next month and will be based at Cork and will operate Cork-Dublin. Presumably replacing the ATR 42 as well as continuing the fight against Ryanair by offering the comfort of a brand new plane on the Cork-Dublin route.

[Tom the Tenor]

Hope she will be CATII! No use having a nice new aeroplane for Cork unless she can land in low viz operations. RE cant be playing into the hands of FR!

[Tom the Tenor]

A few odds & ends. On top of the news that Astraeus are due to operate a Sunday afternoon flight from Cork to ACE with a 757 aircraft during the summer season there is a heads up now that Astraeus are also now down to do the seasonal flight from Cork to Verona on Saturdays as well. The flight is due out ex Cork at 1940 and due back into Leeside at 0135 Sundays.

Where does this leave the ACE flight on Sundays? The Astraeus 757 is due in on Sundays from Gatwick at 3 pm and due to head back again to LGW around 2 am on the Mondays. Is it now to be the one aeroplane? As welcome as they would be it is hard to see two AEU machines turning up at Cork every weekend! Mind you a 737 and a 757 would be great when you consider the long flights both types do in AEU service down to deepest Africa from LGW in the 757 and the westbound flights to Deer Lake in Newfoundland on the 737.

Faith, 'twould give you a bit of an ol' taste for the longhaul! :)

[Tom the Tenor]

How about this for a good one! The main Irish government political party, Fianna Fail, today published their maninfesto for the upcoming General Election which should be due to be called soon for some time in May. One of the main issues they are promoting strongly in their manifesto is the elimination of Ireland's National Debt! It is a pity that the Fianna Fail ministers in government and especially Cork's own boy wonder, Minister Micheal Martin, are not as keen to promote this very same idea as regards the elimination of the Cork Airport debt!

On Saturday night a Tui/Britannia 767 returning to Cork from Lourdes with a load of pilgrim children diverted to Shannon in low visibility. The RVRs were up around 1200 to 1300 metres at the time but the cloud was something around BR 100 ft, BR 300, BR 6000 feet. The low cloud must have put the kybosh on it for the poor kids. It seems that even when the RVRs are okay Cork Airport still gets to be punished?

Cork Airport's Chairman, Mr Joe Gantley, last week took over as President of Cork Chamber. The outgoing President, Mr Spencer Flack, was not slow to stick up for the cause of Cork Airport in the debate of recent months on the debt. Wonder what approach Cork Chamber will now have on the matter with the arrival of the new President?

[ryan2000]

Interesting to see what Thompsonfly's minima for Cork is. Their 737's were CAT2 in 2004/5 when they operated from Coventry. Cloud was very broken on Saturday evening and everything else landed.

[majik]

Hi one and all. I've been reading the forums for a while but this is my first post. I've been very interested to hear peoples opinions on a t/a service from Cork and the expansion/cancellation of EI, FR and WW routes as well.

As a Corkman now living and working in Canada, I have a very big interest in new t/a route as I travel back and forth quite regularly. Other posters have mentioned the current state of the runways vis-a-vis handling larger aircraft B767, B757 A330 etc etc. This would need a capital investment which we all know is not going to happen in the near future.

Without a reliable infrastructure Cork will not attract a legacy carrier, no DL, CO or US or AA. They already operate out of SNN and DUB, why bother allocate another 767 to an airport (Cork) only 80 miles and 160 miles away, this does not make economic sense. Of the legacy carriers only possibly DL and/or CO look like the front runners. It is definitely within COs operational plan to utilise an airport like Cork. They have a habit of flying to national regional airports throughout europe, e.g. Belfast & Glasgow. However I doubt they will as they will feel they have enough capcity on the BFS and DUb routes. Will they pull Shannon? Not likely, but Delta might and if they do they will likely offer a direct t/a route to ATL from ORK.

However don't ever rule out a new route to Canada. YYT and YHZ, even YUL are well within comfortable reach of the range of a319/20 or B737-ER. To put this in perspectibe ORK-YYT is shorter than current flights from ORK to Crete. These kinda of routes would be seasonal but AC already operate a summer DUB-YYZ route, the market is ripe for the likes of Zoom and Air Transat.

However as one final point, there has to be an increase in frequency to the major european hubs. EI 4x daily to LHR is still to little 5x would be about right. 2x daily to AMS, don't make me laugh this is an absolute joke, a major european hub and Cork only offers two flights a day nearly twelve hours apart!:mad: Ditto with CDG and no flights whatsoever to FRA!!! These frequency issues need to shorted out long before a t/a service becomes operational.

thanks for reading
majik

[Rallye EI-BFP]

I dont think Delta will be leaving Shannon anytime soon.

With a new dedicated SNN-JFK this summer...............their not going anytime soon. An airline doesnt need to 'pull' Shannon to operate to CRK at all!

[840]

As regards the frequency to major European hubs, we go back to the old problem of the size of the aircraft based in Cork. If we had the right operator with jets in the 80-100 passenger range we would almost certainly see more frequency to AMS and CDG and more than likely a service to FRA. As it stands, there is nobody between the range limited 66 seat ATR-72s and the 174 seat A320s. However, if I was an operator of Fokker 100s, Embraer 195s etc., I'd be quite wary of basing aircraft in Cork, considering Aer Lingus' and Ryanair's ability to mess up the operation.

With respect to Canada, aren't operations to Canada still governed by a strict bilateral that includes the Shannon stopover?

[Tom the Tenor]

New York and the Boston areas are plenty to hope for on the wish list for Cork Airport for the foreseeable future. I think there is little chance that there will ever be an Atlanta service from Cork and the runway is the very least of the matter in that case. Not enough critical mass around Cork to somewhere like Atlanta. As for Canada, well if the A319 is big enough for the St Johns to Heathrow service you would wonder where a market could be found to and from Cork to the Newfoundland capital. Similarly with Halifax where would the market emerge from to and from Cork? A pity especially when I too have some local Cork connections whom, coincidentally, travel a few times each year to both St Johns and Halifax. Many the long journey they have had from Cork via LHR to either Toronto or Montreal and onto Halifax or St Johns, journeys that have at times turned out to be gruellers at time due to missed connections or other problems.

As for the smaller types for some of the European routes from Cork and more frequency to European capitals. The 737-500 was a great aeroplane for Cork to introduce new routes from Aer Lingus. The good economies of scale affored to FR with the 737-800 and to EI with A320 just does not always blend in with Cork Airport in my opinion. Look at how well bmi baby have utilised the 737-300/500 sized aircraft as it looks like they are well up to EI challenge on the routes to Birmingham and Manchester from Cork. Frankfurt or Dusseldorf; Geneva, Lyon or Milan might all be worth trying from Cork with older aircraft up to 120/130 seaters. Some of the proposed routes above would be seasonal only like in my suggestion to Geneva or Lyon or maybe to somwhere in Austria. Not much room though for low fares so the locals in Cork would have to fork out a premium to get to these new delights.

No doubt Ryanair will want to continue competing for Cork pax with lower fares to destinations close to the above named bactch of cities - the only problem for Cork people and Cork Airport is that the competing will be more than likely from Shannon Airport and not Cork?

Where do you go from there?

[majik]

The bi-lateral will fall, it was protectionism at its worst. SNN now has a glorious example in NOC, that an airport can without hiding behind some outdated agreement attract new a t/a route. SNN has the history/infrastructure/ tourist attractions to not lose t/a routes once the bi-lateral goes.

I very much agree that ORK would be better served by a RJ service rather than a full a320/737-700/800 for some routes however anybody with a vague interest in the airline business (like myself!) can do the maths and tell you that at current oil prices running RJs as opposed turboprops is economical suicide unless you have a very large fleet of them which brings economies of scale into play, Jet Magic anyone?

With regards to the YYT/YHZ route I mentioned. There would be a big demand for the YYT route in the summer. There are massive connections between Ireland and Newfoundland, particularly Waterford. Newfies even speak like people from Waterford :). As with regards to demand, well if Zoom feel there is enough demand from the likes of CWL and BFS to run flights to YHZ, YYZ, YUL and YVR, then surely there would be enough demand from Cork.

[ryan2000]

Problem with A319's on long haul and CRJ on short haul is that they require a higher yield to make them viable. Cork people will shout for direct services but will drive to Shannon or fly via Dublin if the price is right.

[Charlie Roy]

Cork people will shout for direct services but will drive to Shannon or fly via Dublin if the price is right.

I'm not convinced of this :suspect: When Corkonians want to fly to Manchester, Edinburgh, London, Bristol, Madrid, Rome, Barcelona etc. then the vast majority use Cork airport!

I do however accept that lots of Corkonians are driving to Shannon for other flights to the likes of Prestwick, Milan Bergamo, Biarritz, Brussels Charleroi, Düsseldorf Weeze, Lodz, USA and all the other destinations available from Shannon but not from Cork.

[schoolkid]

All this talk of diversions at ORK has got me thinking...

Perhaps that new RE circular livery on the -500 is an artistic interpretation of the RE fleet amongst others in the hold above the southern capital on another glorious CAT 2day!!:O :8

[840]

I think whether people will travel from Dublin or Shannon depending on price has a lot to do with the reason for the trip.

Leisure passengers will, business passengers won't.

Then you come down to who forms the bulk of the passengers on a route. On Cork-Amsterdam, it's definitely business passengers, who would pay more for a frequent service. I'd suspect that Paris would be pretty evenly split.

Considering that the Amsterdam route is almost half-sustained by interlining passengers, more frequency could introduce interlining options with the possibility of reduced onward prices, so it wouldn't even suffer too much for the price conscious.

I wouldn't even be too shocked if it happened on the Amsterdam route. If CityJet were ever to take over DUB-AMS, it would mean the end of the codeshare between Aer Lingus and KLM on ORK-AMS and I'd imagine in those circumstances that CityJet might also start an ORK-AMS service, because I doubt KLM would want to lose the 120-150 or so dailly passengers who are travelling onward with them.

[CCR]

The new owners are using the Radisson SAS brand for the hotel.

[en2r]

CCR
Thanks for the info. Sorry I thought Radisson was a chain not a franchise. I knew they were initially marketing them as CC Hotels but I didn't know they had changed to Radisson SAS.

[Tom the Tenor]

It may be noted that the rebranded Radison Cork Airport Hotel now has a new car park charge in place unlike the former Great Southern Hotel. Parking is free for up to 20 minutes and priced at 2 Euros for up to three hours parking. I cannot remember what the charge is for 3 hours plus but think it is about 2 euros an hours thereafter. It is quite noticeable the amount of cars that have now disappeared from the car park since the new charges were put in place!

There was some sea fog again this morning around Cork and the early morning Ryanair arrival from Stansted, FR901, eventually diverted to Shannon below CATII minima. Her sistership, FR9843 from Dublin, had more luck when the RVR went up around 400 metres and she made it in. Last night's EI868 from Barcelona was last in the line up of EI, Wizz and RE arrivals and ended up having to divert to Shannon in ever reducing visibility. Cant help thinking if a parallel taxiway would have helped the situation for the BCN pax? The aircraft returned from Shannon to Cork just after 9 am today as the EI2882 not long after the diverting FR901 would have landed at Shannon from Cork!

Stone mad.

[ryan2000]

Can't see any further capital investment at Cork as long as the DAA is in control. It is obvious that the hotel car-park was being used for free parking by people in the know. I do think it's unfair to charge hotel customers though. It's bound to impact on their lunch trade. I heard that there are renewed attempts to get ORK-GLA back from October.

[majik]

I heard that there are renewed attempts to get ORK-GLA back from October.

EI I hope.

[en2r]

There are still lots of holes in EI's winter schedule so GLA could probably be fitted in but it would be hard to fit it into the summer schedule without dropping another route. Perhaps it could be operated by a Cork based plane for the winter and a Dublin based plane for the summer on a W pattern? It looks like Faro and Alicante may not be operated for the winter so is there the possibility of a few new routes? Perhaps Geneva or Salzburg?

[RE72]

RE I Hope!!

[Angry Rebel]

I used the GLA flight every Sunday for 3 months two summers ago, and only once was it ever full. No idea about weekday loads.

Granted it was expensive, so not sure how a more reasonable fare structure would do demand wise, but I'd have my doubts about a large jets suitability for that route.

[en2r]

Glasgow could do Okay. RE seem to be doing OK on Edinburgh. They carried almost 50,000 people on the route last year. Considering they use 66 seater aircraft and their fares are usually €60-70 EACH WAY that is pretty well going. Especially when you consider FR fly from Shannon with fares at next to nothing. It might affect the Edinburgh route a little though, since this is currently the only route from Cork to Scotland and Glasgow bound passengers undoubtedly use it at the moment. If the fares were at a similiar level to Dublin-Glasgow I can't see why a jet service wouldn't suceed.

[Tom the Tenor]

Alternatively, RE could do a full double daily to Edinburgh from Cork rather than just four a week and also add in a Saturday flight. If Glasgow is a must from Cork guess RE might be coaxed into a minimal Fri, Sun, Monday type service. A pal of mine lived in Glasgow for many years and he thinks the main problem is that there are generally so few people from the Cork area living around Glasgow. A Fri, Sun, Monday GLA would give a choice for leisure and football traffic alike. Might do okay. A320/738 - hard to see that work.

[en2r]

Has the Skylink bus service ended? It says on the website that the service is suspended until further notice but I don't think they ever did that well so I'd be surprised if they will resume. Its a shame that we're once again left with only the half hearted Bus Eireann effort

[840]

I haven't seen it in operation for a while.

Hopefully, they're just reassessing their route structure. It seems a bit crazy to be effectively duplicating the Bus Eireann service to the city centre, when Carrigaline, Douglas, Bishopstown and Ballincollig have no bus link to the airport.

As regards the Glasgow route. I'd prefer to see double-daily to Edinburgh. Edinburgh airport to Glasgow isn't that tricky and it's nice (and rare) to have a route from Cork offering convenient business timings. However, any new business at all at the airport is not to be dismissed.

[Tom the Tenor]

Another Ryanair Cork rumor which is doing the rounds at the moment is the one that later in the year, presumably but not necessarily around the start of the winter schedule, is that the the Stansted schedule may be operated by a Cork based aeroplane. Guess that might make some sense especially if FR have plenty of based flight crew at Cork? You could start with the first STN flight around 6.30 am, go there around 3 to 4 times daily and maybe get in another rotation to somewhere else as well? As for Dublin flights guess that would be an aircraft of it's own like now - the question is would FR continue with the five DUB and one LGW rotations or would that change in any way? Doing the STN flights from Cork would allow FR to claim they are doubling their Cork base and as former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds used to say perception is what matters. ;)

There was high drama above yesterday with the diverting in of no less than three U S Army Beech RC-12Ns from Shannon due crosswinds. Super King Airs without windows and bristling with as many as aerials as could be bolted on. Due out to Keflavik this morning.

Nice for once for Cork to get one over on Shannon - that does not happen too often.

I nearly forgot - it is interesting to note that Aer Lingus are swapping the EI711 at Heathrow from an A320 to an A321 every morning at the moment. She then goes back to LHR as the EI712 and the Cork aeroplane then returns in the afternoon as the EI715. The EI713/4 from LHR which is operated by a Dublin based A321 anyway continues as as normal. Good to see the A321 having more presence again at Cork.

Making up for some of last summer's London capacity from EZY and FR to and from Gatwick. Remember Cork is two to three EZY flights and one FR flight down from Gatwick this summer.

[en2r]

If it operated on a similiar schedule to the Shannon-Stansted route it could operate the three Stansted rotations as well as Liverpool and possibly another short route such as East Midlands or Bristol. As for Dublin, there was overcapacity on the Cork-Dublin route when FR operated 4 flights per day so I can't see how 5 738 and 7 ATR72 flights (when the new aircraft arrives next month) can be supported. However we all know MOL is not one who admits defeat easily