Re: Re: Cork Transport

@jungle wrote:

Since privatisation, Aer Lingus isn’t the national airline, their role is to make a profit.

In fact, their only internal route is Dublin-Shannon and this is just expeiency on their part because the stopover forces them to operate aircraft with otherwise empty seats.

They have a flight that arrives in Amsterdam at 9am. Aside from the immediate return flight, there’s also one back at 8:30pm four days a week. Short of multiple daily flights, you’re not going to get much better than that for connections.

Driving from Amsterdam, you could make Duesseldorf by midday (Give it an hour longer by train). Coming back, you could leave around 4:30 and make the evening flight. A bit short for a day-trip, but I can’t imagine connecting flights doing significantly better, even if their Duesseldorf-Dublin was earlier.

I’d agree that we need more direct flights to Germany. Unfortunately, Ryanair’s 737-800s and Aer Lingus’ A320s are too big and won’t be filled, while Aer Arann’s ATRs don’t really have the range. It would be nice to see an operator at the airport that used Fokker 100s or Embraer 195s, so that those routes that could support maybe 80-100 passengers could be given a chance.

I was not necessarily thinking of Amsterdam in terms of Germany alone: it is a central hub for KLM and as means of getting on to the southern part of the island Amsterdam is important for conmnections from Denmark and Scandanavia; as well as f rom Luxembourg, South Germany and Austria as well as from Milan. Remember, 9am in these parts of the worlis already “sehr Spate”. Connecting from Amsterdam at 10 to anywhere else by 11 means you have a meeting at 12 – and that, for the Germanic, mind is boggling for a business day. Then, by the time you are back in Amsterdam, Aer Lingus are gone too early. If it left at 10 pm, that would help.

As for Fokkers, well nomen est omen! Thay are ear-bangers. I much prefer the BAe alternative which is smoother and much more plesant to fly on.