Regional Airports

Sponge Bob

Shannon cannot be closed, it is the main emergency runway for the entire east atlantic. The terminals could close but the airfield itself never will.

cml387

Shannon cannot be closed, it is the main emergency runway for the entire east atlantic. The terminals could close but the airfield itself never will.

What about Prestwick?

L1011

cml387 wrote: »

Shannon cannot be closed, it is the main emergency runway for the entire east atlantic. The terminals could close but the airfield itself never will.

What about Prestwick?

Prestwick is just part of the ATC area. The actual runway at Shannon is the critical one.

Its also a space shuttle landing site, should that ever be resurrected :pac:

oharach

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Shannon cannot be closed, it is the main emergency runway for the entire east atlantic. The terminals could close but the airfield itself never will.

Don't worry. My point was that Shannon is there to stay and serves Galway well – therefore Galway Airport can close.

antoobrien

oharach wrote: »

I have yet to hear someone on this forum advocate the closure of Shannon. Considering the relatively small size of its catchment, Shannon has great international connectivity, and is maybe an hour and half away from Galway by bus – and even less for business people, who will either have their own cars or hire one.

If you think business people won't mind driving for an hour or so to get to their destinations then you won't mind hearing this alternative. Build a new International Airport in the midlands and make it the primary international Airport for Ireland, removing support for all others. Give PSOs to one of the airlines to provide connections to Dublin (there could be competition).

Tullamore or Clara would be idea sites for a few reasons:
Centrally located
Exisitng rail network
Extensive road connectivity to most of the country.

A few things would have to happen to make this a reality:
Upgrade of the N80
Dual tracking of at least Portarlington - Athlone & possibly the rest of the Galway & Westport lines
Possibly Longford to Rosscommon Spur line (people won't have to travel by train to dublin to go back)
Upgrade of the N54/55 (to complete Road connectivity).

Let Cork, Dublin, Galway, Knock and Shannon operate as regional aiports, with priority support going to Shannon as the Atlantic emergency strip to ensure that the runway keeps open.

oharach

Oh God, will we never hear the end of this Midlands airport...

I never suggested siting airports far away from the primary population centres. You are just being facetious with your idea of making Dublin a 'regional airport'. How do you think you would stop the airlines flying directly into the capital city and main business centre – some sort of autocratic anti-competitive agreement? Good luck getting past the European Commission with that one.

Dublin is big enough for an international airport. Period. Cork also. Galway and Limerick are not big enough imo to support independent airports that run without a public subvention. Ideally, an airport to serve both would be right in the middle, but Shannon is built now, and can't be moved, including for emergency diversionary purposes, as mentioned by several posters. At least it's on the right side of Limerick for Galway, and the road is being massively upgraded.

I readily admit that removing the subvention from Galway, and precipitating its closure, will have an adverse effect on Galway. The question is how much business will be actually lost, and how much will simply redirect via other airports. No one on this forum can really tell whether it would be good value or not, because we don't have the figures. But there are some arguments, like white elephant midland-distributor airports that don't even merit discussion.

antoobrien

oharach wrote: »

You are just being facetious with your idea of making Dublin a 'regional airport'. How do you think you would stop the airlines flying directly into the capital city and main business centre

There's a point you're missing about Dublin - that the DAA (which also runs Cork & Shannon) is running it as IRELAND's international airport, rather than one of 3 international airports in Ireland.

It'd be very easy to stop carriers from flying into Dublin. Leave Dublin airport with the current debt load of all three airports (any works were don on the Air Rianta/DAA tab anyways) and it become uncompetitive overnight and carriers would run away from it. Ryanair give the impression that they'd love to get out of it if they could (yes i know it's just pr) because of costs, so for the sake of a bit of fun I'd love to float this to Mr O'Leary just to see the look on his face.

antoobrien

oharach wrote: »

You are just being facetious with your idea of making Dublin a 'regional airport'.

It's not a facetious comment. One of the biggest problems in this country is the knee jerk (and when I hear them usually shouted at me) NO reactions to any suggestion that might take something away from Dublin (yes I do work there). How the hell can we develop the infrastructure in this country with that kind of attitude?

oharach

antoobrien wrote: »

There's a point you're missing about Dublin - that the DAA (which also runs Cork & Shannon) is running it as IRELAND's international airport, rather than one of 3 international airports in Ireland.

Is it surprising that most of the resources go to the airport in the biggest city by far? Anyway, I'm not sure the bias is as great as you are making it out to be. Have a look at this press release from the Dublin Airport website:

Ryanair Rejects DAA’s €60 Million Incentive Offer to Deliver New PassengersThe Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has offered Ryanair more than €60 million worth of discounts on airport charges to stimulate increased traffic into its three Irish airports. Negotiations between the two companies ended today after Ryanair’s insistence that it be paid more than €100 million in discounts, with no guarantee of any additional traffic. Ryanair also wanted to be paid more than €10 million in discounts for existing passengers at Dublin Airport. The Ryanair proposal would have seen the airline potentially being financially rewarded for reducing traffic at Cork and Shannon airports and transferring it to Dublin Airport.

DAA takes Cork and Shannon airports seriously, but there is no chance they will ever be as big as Dublin. It defies logic.

Point to a single country whose biggest airport is not close to a major population centre, usually the capital. I don't hear anyone suggesting BAA should rebrand Heathrow 'West London Regional' and force planes to land at Edinburgh.

antoobrien wrote: »

It'd be very easy to stop carriers from flying into Dublin. Leave Dublin airport with the current debt load of all three airports (any works were don on the Air Rianta/DAA tab anyways) and it become uncompetitive overnight and carriers would run away from it. Ryanair give the impression that they'd love to get out of it if they could (yes i know it's just pr) because of costs, so for the sake of a bit of fun I'd love to float this to Mr O'Leary just to see the look on his face.

This would almost certainly be illegal. As it happens, I'm going to hear Mr Barroso speak in 40 minutes. Maybe I'll ask him...

antoobrien

oharach wrote: »

This would almost certainly be illegal. As it happens, I'm going to hear Mr Barroso speak in 40 minutes.

Now who's being facetious.

The DAA use these costs as a justification for their fees. Also there's precedent: when the government proposed that Cork & Shannon would be established as independent airports the proposal was to have Cork & Shannon debt free (thus leaving corks then €220m debt to the DAA). Cork eventually agreed to €113m

So please explain how would this be illegal?

oharach

antoobrien wrote: »

So please explain how would this be illegal?

Competition law is not my speciality, but I would imagine that the Commission might have something to say if Cork and Shannon were given an unfair advantage over other airports by having their debt effectively wiped out by the government.

I wasn't being deliberately facetious. I did go to hear Barroso talk, and was speaking with him afterwards. Unfortunately, he was clueless about the field I'm interested in, jurisdiction and the Brussels I Regulation.

L1011

Galway to Dublin not viable as a commercial service:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0407/aerarann.html

RTE report also suggests that Sligo and Knock to Dublin are gone too, albeit from someone playing on the booking system.

dowlingm

SXL is a bit of a nobrainer and given RE have no other routes out of NOC I'm not too surprised at this either.

I would think though the economics of GWY-DUB should be a bit different given the several other routes out of there, and absent the PSO timing requirements they could have reduced the service or reordered it to make it compatible with EI's connections and designate it as an addition EI Regional route. Grandstanding perhaps?

Neworder79

dowlingm wrote: »

I would think though the economics of GWY-DUB should be a bit different given the several other routes out of there, and absent the PSO timing requirements they could have reduced the service or reordered it to make it compatible with EI's connections and designate it as an addition EI Regional route. Grandstanding perhaps?

Possibly, but the minister for transport tonight said there is no money to reverse the decision and he is "disappointed" RE wont operate it commercially. O'Ceidigh may be upping pressure to keep the airport grants and his fees low.

Moving GWY services to EIR would be the end of the Aer Arann brand though, which is wedded to the GWY base be that as it may. Bit of split personality at the moment, are they RE or EIR, which takes prioraty, national airline or a Galway airline, GWY base or SEN ...

Sponge Bob

dowlingm wrote: »

I would think though the economics of GWY-DUB should be a bit different given the several other routes out of there,

Passengers on that route were down from 100k in 2006 ( top of bubble and no motorway west of Kinnegad) to 25k in 2010 ( ecoonomic nadir in Ireland and elsewhere combined with complete motorway and aer arann in examin/receivership ) .

A bit different, yes.

dowlingm

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Passengers on that route were down from 100k in 2006 ( top of bubble and no motorway west of Kinnegad) to 25k in 2010

Wow. Didn't know things were that bad. The subsidy/seat must have been huge by then. Is IAA posting these numbers? Last I looked you could only get Ireland-UK from CAA but that was a while ago.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

antoobrien wrote: »

There's a point you're missing about Dublin - that the DAA (which also runs Cork & Shannon) is running it as IRELAND's international airport, rather than one of 3 international airports in Ireland.

But doesn't this miss the point that there is only scope for one significant international airport in Ireland. The plan was that Shannon would be that airport, hence (in the past) the Stopover and the tax incentives and so forth.

But, despite all those incentives, Shannon just didn't have the potential to deliver. The passenger traffic went to Dublin, despite a legal ban that compelled Dublin to operate with a short runway unsuitable for long-haul traffic, and a woefully inadequate terminal building.

Isn't this the truth of it? Its not that anyone planned for traffic to concentrate in Dublin - quite the opposite. Barriers were put in Dublin's way, while incentives were given to Shannon.

T2 was really just the final acceptance, after decades of denial and delay, that investment was needed in Dublin to cope with the business that had already arrived.

And, yes, wasn't the timing of its opening perfect, just as business goes bang. Still, I think we need to be clear about how we got here.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Shannon cannot be closed, it is the main emergency runway for the entire east atlantic. The terminals could close but the airfield itself never will.

Who, if anyone, pays Ireland for providing this seemingly eternal promise of sanctuary?

murphaph

Emergency landings from the Atlantic route often take place at Prestwick too. Tbh if we hadn't so many pokey little regional airports then Shannon may have done better. Galway is (in European terms anyway) a stone's throw from Shannon and Galway Airport shouldn't really exist. If we're being realistic, the M20 should be there (or some decent road) at some point and then Cork-Shannon becomes an hour and a bit too. I'm just looking at a map of Germany on the wall in front of me and in the territory of the former GDR there are 8 airports that appear on the map. There will soon be 7 when Tegel closes after BBI opens. I know that Berlin has relatively poor connections for a city its size (Dublin has many more destinations) so I dread to think how few places can be reached from the likes of Neu-Brandenburg or somewhere like that. Basically people from the whole of the former East Germany generally travel to Berlin by land transport to take a flight to anywhere of significance and even then there's a good chance it won't be a direct flight.

In Ireland we'll have to consolidate as well and let these regional airports close. The PSO will be better spent on improving land transport from these places to larger cities, where people can then fly from.

JupiterKid

murphaph wrote: »

Emergency landings from the Atlantic route often take place at Prestwick too. Tbh if we hadn't so many pokey little regional airports then Shannon may have done better. Galway is (in European terms anyway) a stone's throw from Shannon and Galway Airport shouldn't really exist. If we're being realistic, the M20 should be there (or some decent road) at some point and then Cork-Shannon becomes an hour and a bit too. I'm just looking at a map of Germany on the wall in front of me and in the territory of the former GDR there are 8 airports that appear on the map. There will soon be 7 when Tegel closes after BBI opens. I know that Berlin has relatively poor connections for a city its size (Dublin has many more destinations) so I dread to think how few places can be reached from the likes of Neu-Brandenburg or somewhere like that. Basically people from the whole of the former East Germany generally travel to Berlin by land transport to take a flight to anywhere of significance and even then there's a good chance it won't be a direct flight.

In Ireland we'll have to consolidate as well and let these regional airports close. The PSO will be better spent on improving land transport from these places to larger cities, where people can then fly from.

Completely agree. The new motorway network will be the death knell for many of the smaller regional airports. Shannon should serve both Galway and Limerick.

I think that Knock should also be viable but that's it.

veryangryman

JupiterKid wrote: »

Completely agree. The new motorway network will be the death knell for many of the smaller regional airports. Shannon should serve both Galway and Limerick.

I think that Knock should also be viable but that's it.

I hate to completely sound illogical but...

Really why do we have to copy other country's approaches. We are an isolated island - Germany is land-reachable to most corners of Europe. That has to be factored into account. Germans also have a fantastic road network internally and to most other neighbouring countries (Warsaw is an exception ill allow for)

In terms of time spent getting to the airport we are still not that impressive. The airports were built when the country hadnt got any infra worth talking about. Granted that has improved hugely but.. (and listen up here everyone), not everybody drives a car. People from Kerry/Sligo should be able to do a day trip to/from Dublin (assuming they fork out the cash naturally) without needing their own wheels. They should also be able to get there in a timely manner for flight connections.

What has been forgotten about in all these forums is that a motorway does not solve all the problems. These airports do still serve a purpose. Lose the PSOs and put up fares by all means but I find closing them very short sighted.

"Sure everyone drives" - No, they dont.

Stinicker

Normally I fly from Cork being from Kerry and only use Kerry Airport for short hops to the UK, for most European destinations involves going to Dublin airport by train, what I think would be a massive boost to the accessibility of Dublin airport would be if CIE ran night trains (3 car units) for to help facilitate those awful early flights from Dublin eg. leave Tralee and call to:

Tralee - Killarney - Mallow - Limerick Junction - Portlaoise - Newbridge - Hazelhatch - Heuston as the Airport express, it could also be fed from Cork, Limerick and the West and keep pricing low to between €20 to €25 return. If the Metro to the Airport is ever built I believe that it should be built to Irish guage to allow mainline trains to run to the airport as they have in other countries. I have taken fairly long distance trains from Central Germany direct to Amsterdam Airport.

Ireland's Regional airports are fine however we need to promote Dublin and increase the links to it to increase its popularity.

Sponge Bob

Nobody is advocating 'losing' Kerry. The only airports at serious risk from loss of OPEX subvention are those where the runway is short and catchment area has a motorway to Dublin. These would be Galway and Waterford.

dowlingm

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Nobody is advocating 'losing' Kerry. The only airports at serious risk from loss of OPEX subvention are those where the runway is short and catchment area has a motorway to Dublin. These would be Galway and Waterford.

Sligo's got to be in some danger too. It's 55 mins from NOC with BE running a 2 hourly service departures ex Sligo 0600-1800, and if they were thrown a fraction of Sligo's PSO money you could make that hourly. Without a runway extension it's always going to be regarded as tricky to operate to (see Euroceltic) but the extension is in an environmentally sensitive area. For comparison, Galway-SNN and Galway-NOC is 1h45m by BE.

angelfire9

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Shannon cannot be closed, it is the main emergency runway for the entire east atlantic. The terminals could close but the airfield itself never will.

Shannon Airport has the longest runway in Ireland and is therefore the one that most transatlantic emergencies head to for landing

it is designated by NASA as a safe landing location for the space shuttle in the event of an emergency

http://www.irelandaerialphotography.com/aerial_photos/dr_f2_3806_shannon_airport.html


With an elevation of 153 m (502 ft) above sea level, Cork Airport is sometimes prone to fog and a low cloud ceiling. The Instrument Landing System has been upgraded to Category II, and together with a 305 m (1,001 ft) extension of the main runway has significantly reduced the number of diversions. However during times of severe inclement weather the airport can suffer from delays or diversions to airports such as Shannon, Dublin or Kerry. Similarly, diversions from these airports occasionally land at Cork.
The length of the main runway dictates that the airport cannot handle fully laden large widebody aircraft. Large wide-bodied aircraft do visit Cork Airport on a regular basis and usually only operate on ad-hoc charter services


Shannon Airport's new terminal was opened in 2000 at a cost of circa €40 million, compared to debts of €113 million for Cork and Dublin Airport's debts are even higher

Is it any wonder then that the DUBLIN Airport Authority which runs the 3 airports gives preference to Dublin over Cork & Shannon every time!

Shannon and Cork should be given autonomy and let them sink or swim

Shannon airport has already shown it's ability to innovate, Shannon had the WORLD's first duty free and the world's first Irish Coffee :D

veryangryman

dowlingm wrote: »

Sligo's got to be in some danger too. It's 55 mins from NOC with BE running a 2 hourly service departures

Which would be fine if Knock ran a large variety of services to mainland Europe (they dont)

Any of (for example) the Polish community living in Sligo and wantign to go home would need to go via Dublin. Ergo, a flight to the capital is a good option for them

dowlingm

not really a reason to subsidise flights with tax money, is it?

dubhthach

angelfire9 wrote: »

... and the world's first Irish Coffee :D

Wasn't that not Foynes across the river and not Rinenna (Shannon airport)

veryangryman

dowlingm wrote: »

not really a reason to subsidise flights with tax money, is it?

Read my earlier post regarding withdrawing PSO's. If the customer is willing to pay the price for these flights, they should be allowed the facility.

serfboard

veryangryman wrote: »

Which would be fine if Knock ran a large variety of services to mainland Europe (they dont)

Any of (for example) the Polish community living in Sligo and wantign to go home would need to go via Dublin. Ergo, a flight to the capital is a good option for them

dowlingm wrote: »

Sligo's ... 55 mins from NOC with BE running a 2 hourly service departures ex Sligo 0600-1800, and if they were thrown a fraction of Sligo's PSO money you could make that hourly.

veryangryman wrote: »

If the customer is willing to pay the price for these flights, they should be allowed the facility.

So, the Polish community in Sligo would, in your opinion, be willing to pay whatever it costs to fly directly from Knock to Poland? Rather than taking the (admittedly once-a-day) bus service that goes directly from Sligo to Dublin Airport and flying from there?

If there is a market there, which I doubt, I'm sure Mick O'Leary will eventually discover it and cater for it. After all, he's already flying to Barcelona, Faro and the Canaries from Knock. (And for Polish flights, for example, he goes Shannon to Wroclaw. If he thinks Knock-Wroclaw is a runner I'm sure he'll put it on. The fact that he hasn't shows it's not).