Cork Transport

Friom the quondam Cork Examiner of 1 December 2006
01 December 2006

Ryanair spells trouble for airport income

SO Ryanair wants to use the old terminal at Cork airport and open 17 new routes. Exciting times. A million extra passengers per year.

But what will be the cost to Cork airport? Check with Shannon.

They lost five or six airlines with the arrival of Ryanair which is only paying 50c a passenger when the others were paying full rates of €9.

Gone are Hapag, Lloyd Express, Thomsonfly, FlyBe, British Airways and Eirjet, as well as Easyjet.

Ryanair drove Go Airlines and Easyjet out of Ireland.

When Easyjet left Cork airport, Ryanair reduced their flights by one a day to Stansted and Gatwick. Now Ryanair have Aer Arann out of Cork in their sights and, as Michael O’Leary says, “Aer Lingus are next”.

Shannon airport has an extra one million passengers, but at a cost of over €10 million in lost revenue.

Ryanair admits it cannot get the yield it wants in Shannon, so God help them when Ryanair cuts back and the others are gone.

Evan White
4 Victoria Villas
Western Road
Cork

Although the location doesn’t help, the major problem in Cork is that it only has CAT II ILS, while Dublin and Shannon have CAT III ILS.

Mind you, a further problem is that a number of airlines don’t have either aircraft or equipment to support CAT II. Compare Aer Lingus’ and Ryanair’s low diversion rate to those of Aer Arann and BMI Baby.

@jungle wrote:

Although the location doesn’t help, the major problem in Cork is that it only has CAT II ILS, while Dublin and Shannon have CAT III ILS.

Mind you, a further problem is that a number of airlines don’t have either aircraft or equipment to support CAT II. Compare Aer Lingus’ and Ryanair’s low diversion rate to those of Aer Arann and BMI Baby.

You are correct, you have prevailing SW winds which crosswinds on the main runway. Not the end of the world but just that bit more difficult. pal of my a comm pilot… hates the place… interestingly he say in bad conditions where he would be expected to land many charter flight with pilots there for perhaps first time will say feck it and head to shannon.

Category 2 instrument landing system… does not help…Can anyone recall the old yarn that Cork aiport was originally planned for the midleton area but never got there….. there used to be scurroulous rumours about some man called Haughey involvement…

@Praxiteles wrote:

Friom the quondam Cork Examiner of 1 December 2006
01 December 2006

Ryanair spells trouble for airport income

SO Ryanair wants to use the old terminal at Cork airport and open 17 new routes. Exciting times. A million extra passengers per year.

But what will be the cost to Cork airport? Check with Shannon.

They lost five or six airlines with the arrival of Ryanair which is only paying 50c a passenger when the others were paying full rates of €9.

Gone are Hapag, Lloyd Express, Thomsonfly, FlyBe, British Airways and Eirjet, as well as Easyjet.

Ryanair drove Go Airlines and Easyjet out of Ireland.

When Easyjet left Cork airport, Ryanair reduced their flights by one a day to Stansted and Gatwick. Now Ryanair have Aer Arann out of Cork in their sights and, as Michael O’Leary says, “Aer Lingus are next”.

Shannon airport has an extra one million passengers, but at a cost of over €10 million in lost revenue.

Ryanair admits it cannot get the yield it wants in Shannon, so God help them when Ryanair cuts back and the others are gone.

Evan White
4 Victoria Villas
Western Road
Cork

dont agree with that at all, definitely some vested interest or something. Theres a lot of airlines pulling out of Cork already and Ryanair arent based there at all. Perhaps its because 140m was spent on a lovely looking highly impractical airport that has no viewing gallery, no airbridges, long waits for baggage and a long long walk to the terminal where you climb stairs to get in

@lawyer wrote:

they might have had some money for a viewing gallery – or even a few seats other than those in the eating areas. [Not to mind €4.50 for a pint of lager]

This was actually deliberate in the design. One of the complaints from business travellers (the principal and most profitable users of the airport) was that the old airport resembled a creche at times. The lack of seating before security is to encourage departing passengers to pass through security as quickly as possible. You’ll find that there are very few pre-security seats in most newly built airports around the world nowadays.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

You’ll also find that there are very few post-security seats as well. Overall I find the design to be poorly thought out and executed. Take your typical Sunday night where a very high number of flights depart around the same time, or any weekday morning and the departures lounge areas are quite congested.

Angry Rebel is quite correct – there is practically no seating after security and after DUTY_FREE. The lay out resembles Terminal 2D at Charles de Gaule except that it is smaller, more cramped and impossible to form an orederly boarding line. If the the lack of seating before security is to encourage people not to “hang-out” I am wonderning whether the the lack of seating after security is not to encourage travellers to “hang-in” at the DUTY FREE?

As for arrivals, it should not have been too hard to spend a few bob just to let people know that the lift has been heard of in the environs of Cork!

@Angry Rebel wrote:

…or to take a seat in the bar…!

….did not think of that….Praxiteles is a Pioneer!!

Pores?

http://www.examiner.ie/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=20439-qqqx=1.asp

The article is a little disjointed, but raises some interesting points. The river bus would be welcome, but I feel it would be better connecting people onto the train at Cobh and not bothering to come up above Monkstown. It would take a very long time to get from the Lower Harbour to Cork by boat.

Good to see that someone is discussing the whole Kent Station shambles too.

@samuel j wrote:

Not if the operator get the right craft…. there is a vast choice of waterbuses out there on the market with most modern designs giving good speed. no reason it could not be a 35-45 minute journey if the correct craft is chosen, which is ending right in the city would be good.

Lets just hope the feasibility study is not left to a land lubber who comes up with some clapped out slow boat to China type of craft…..

I was under the impression that the Harbour had a very slow speed limit?