Lack of new routes at Cork airport

Lambofdave

Another potential death nail in Cork airport


Irish Rail plan to link Dublin Airport with rest of country

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-rail-plan-to-link-dublin-airport-with-rest-of-country-30936601.html

namloc1980

Lambofdave wrote: »

Another potential death nail in Cork airport


Irish Rail plan to link Dublin Airport with rest of country

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-rail-plan-to-link-dublin-airport-with-rest-of-country-30936601.html

They've been talking about that for literally 30 years. And a 3.5 hour train journey isn't exactly enticing.

SpaceTime

That'll make no difference whatsoever other than for local access in Dublin. It's just a spur to the DART line.

You'll have to get a DART to Connolly a Luas to Heuston and an intercity to Cork. Hardly all that convenient.

The big issue for Cork that's driving people away is prices on routes and total lack og advertising too.

I'm amazed at how many people in the Midlands didn't even seem to be aware that Cork airport exists.

It could do with driving more passengers to book using its own website too and pushing how accessible it is and how cheap and safe its long term parking is and how has excellent airport hotels to make your trip easier.

None of that seems well communicated to me.

roundymac

You can get the bus from Heuston to Dublin Airport as it is, just a bit of free advertising, ala MOL style. I used do deliveries to the Midlands, unbelievable that people did not know about Cork Airport. I pulled up the aertel pages for them one day, they were genuinely shocked at what was available ex Cork. This would have been mid to late noughties. I'm going to Munich later in the year, it's about the last of "international" routes out of Cork apart from Prague that we hav'nt been to. Our other options were to go through Dublin, most would have included an overnight coming or going. I did that last year going to Vienna, I swore never again. The other options would be going through LHR or AMS and that's a day lost coming and going so a four day trip to Munich would become a six day trip if we were to do one of those routes.

SpaceTime

It's Cork airport's own fault though for not advertising over the years.

It isn't communicating what it has very well at all and it needs to be communicating nationally and not just with Cork.

roundymac

Agreed, it's only not that they are starting to react to the private carparks that have been offering a great service to theirs. Now you can book in the short term (covered) car park for a long term stay at half the price that they were offering it at. If they have taken that long to figure that out, how long will it take them to react to downturn in travel?

SpaceTime

The key selling points of Cork Airport that need to be pushed are quite simple really:

1) Ease of access - It's minutes outside Cork City on the N40 South Ring, easily accessible via the M8 from the entire Midlands area, easily accessible from Kerry, Limerick and Waterford. Linked by Public transport from Kent Station and only a relatively short taxi ride from there too. (Much more accessible than Shannon in many ways)

2) Parking - Lots of conveniently located, safe, good value parking.

3) Hotels and Shopping - Two hotels on site and within 10 minutes of all of Cork City's vast array of hotels, cafes, restaurants, nightlife and shopping as well as suburban shopping centres like Mahon Point (10 mins away). This makes it a really good place to start or end your trip.

4) It has a decent array of routes even as it stands. If it pushes it they could get more.

5) Ultra modern terminal, relaxed, pleasant and it has all the usual restaurants and duty free.

6) No fuss departures. You're unlikely to be queuing for hours!

It should be selling itself as something like :

Cork Airport - Munster's Gateway to Europe.

and abroad as something like Cork Airport : Gateway to Southern Ireland.

Whole branding and marketing should be about convenience and being an alternative to choked up hubs (cough: Dublin)

I strongly suspect part of the problem is that the DAA doesn't really want to cannibalise Dublin Airport's market either though. So, doesn't really focus on Cork at all.

SpaceTime

namloc1980 wrote: »

They've been talking about that for literally 30 years. And a 3.5 hour train journey isn't exactly enticing.

Also, the Cork rail line's not even directly connected into that spur really. There is a tunnel under the Phoenix Park but it's not used for passenger services. From what I gather it would involve a load of messing going in and out of Heuston Station and the complications of reorganising things wouldn't be worth the benefits when there's a short Luas link between Heuston and Connolly anyway.

That rail link will be big competition for Belfast City and Belfast International Airports though as it will make DUB very easily accessed from Northern Ireland.

It looks like it would be quite feasible to run a train service straight from Belfast Central to Dublin Airport which has far better onward links than Belfast's airports generally have.

You're not likely to ever see (in our life times anyway) a Cork-Dublin Airport Intercity train.

If anything, other than at peak rush hour (and only in the evening as there's little out-bound traffic in the mornings) it would be nearly easier to just get a bus from Heuston to Dublin Airport if you were going to go by train.

I think though, Cork absolutely needs to focus on making itself the hub for Munster/Southern Ireland. It's ideally placed, if marketed correctly, to really have a very big impact.

Also, I think they should be looking at bringing in tourism advertising thorough surrounding regions too.

I think we need to get past this notion that Cork Airport is "Cork's Airport". It's actually a major transit hub for the entire Southern chunk of Ireland. It needs to position itself strongly as "Ireland's Southern Gateway"

We've actually got a very decent position compared to most countries though with all parts of Ireland within reach of a major airport though:

East: Dublin
South: Cork (& Kerry)
West : Shannon (Galway-Limerick)
Northwest : Knock & Derry
Northern Ireland / Northeast: Belfast

I think long term Shannon needs to be positioned as "Galway-Limerick" airport i.e. to get into people's heads that it's a shared facility for two relatively major cities in Ireland. Due to motorway access it's perfectly positioned to be a top notch transit hub for those two population centres.

Cork's too far away from Shannon and has a (by Irish standards) huge population in its hinterland. This notion that somehow things should be focused on Shannon from Cork makes no sense really. It is absolutely needed and shows significantly higher demand than Shannon too (without any of the incentives or funnelling of US military flights to prop up numbers).

Thinking regionally in Ireland though is something that's beyond most of our politicans and actually most of the population too. It's all this "GAA Shirt" mentality i.e. county vs county which is totally stupid. Cork's a natural hub for the whole South Munster region really and I think people need to start seeing it like that. Same goes for Galway in the West, Limerick in the Midwest etc.

I don't really see why someone from say Tipperary shouldn't be able to think of Cork as *their* city tbh.

notharrypotter

I don't really see why someone from say Tipperary shouldn't be able to think of Cork as *their* city tbh.

And

Cork's a natural hub for the whole South Munster region really

Main urban area (s) in north/south Tipp to Dublin airport 2 hours.

Greater connectivity.
As time goes on all airports outside Dublin will struggle.

XXXX Airport in the west/south west/north west will only work as a local airport for XXXX with limited route options simply because the critical mass of population is not there.

The Government strategy is to maximise their return on transport links.
This means that more and more will be concentrated from Dublin with limited services from the regions.

We may not like this but that's the new reality we live in.

JCX BXC

For the record, cork should not call themselves "musters gateway" as there are 4 airports in Munster with commercial passenger operations. Cork may be the largest, but only marginally. Shannon will soon takeover if the route loss Is not stopped from cork.

I agree though, cork should be marketed. Funnily enough I only ever hear Dublin marketing, which tbh is rather stupid considering most of Ireland fly from there anyway.

Cork needs a nice healthy marketing budget geared towards the midland and the south east as many of these people fly from Dublin.

rebs23

notharrypotter wrote: »

And
Main urban area (s) in north/south Tipp to Dublin airport 2 hours.

Greater connectivity.
As time goes on all airports outside Dublin will struggle.

XXXX Airport in the west/south west/north west will only work as a local airport for XXXX with limited route options simply because the critical mass of population is not there.

The Government strategy is to maximise their return on transport links.
This means that more and more will be concentrated from Dublin with limited services from the regions.

We may not like this but that's the new reality we live in.

The Ireland that you envisage is one where we concentrate everything in a location that is already economically overloaded. The Dublin region simply cannot cope as it is.
Cork has a population of 520,000 and north tipp/south tipp are within and 1.5 hours from Cork Airport. Obviously that varies but within 2 hours drive of Cork there is a considerable catchment area which if the Government wants to maximise its investment in infrastructure would use the existing structure around Cork more efficiently for the Country.
Whether you like it or not there is considerable private sector economic activity in the Cork region (nearly 36% of industrial output) from Pharma/Bio tech to IT, Med Tech, financial services.

A lot of these industries need a functioning Airport and if this country wants to maintain and keep that important economic base then it will utlilise the infrastructure better to provide a greater return to the National economy than simply basing everything in the one place to the expense of the rest of the country.

Over centralisation in one region only results in ridiculous house price inflation, commercial property inflation, wage inflation, etc and then it crashes and burns because we have priced ourselves out of the market.

Anyway, politically, it simply won't be allowed to continue as it is clear at this stage that people living outside of Dublin are sick of the same tired policies and strategies which result in an over centralised economy and a lack of economic progression elsewhere and indeed in Dublin.

Cork Airport is being strangled from developing by deliberate Government policy whether that is in relation to decisions made to Shannon or Dublin. Let the Airports compete freely and on the same basis against each other and we'll see what happens.

SpaceTime

SpaceTime wrote: »

Cork's too far away from Shannon and has a (by Irish standards) huge population in its hinterland. This notion that somehow things should be focused on Shannon from Cork makes no sense really.

Cork and Shannon airports will only be an hour apart from each other once the M20 is completed.

Corks big problem if they get independence will be competing with Shannon. Shannon has no debt as the 100 million debt was paid off by the taxpayers. They also have a yearly 13 million rental income from state property to subsidise the airport which helps undercut everybody else which was also given by the taxpayers. After a bailout of that magnitude it was obvious that the government will do what it takes to keep Shannon open whatever the cost. Nobody in Cork appeared to care when Shannon got the bailout when it should of been obvious that Cork would suffer as a result. There is only so many passengers to go around.

Your also forgetting that Cork will also have to compete with Kerry and Waterford which are even closer than Shannon, albeit very small. Commonsense would of seen one large common airport for the region positioned between Limerick and Cork, but that's unlikely now. Politicians should be ashamed when you consider that hundreds of millions was spent on both airports in the past 20 years and both are now struggling. It would of paid for a modern new airport in a better location.

SpaceTime

The problem I see in Ireland and it's totally relevant to this is that a mentality of Dublin vs Down the Country exists both in Dublin and in rural areas.

It's resulted in very poor focus on the 4 other cities which should be priorites as regional hubs.

I find in debate there's often this nonsense that every non-Dublin urban area is the same size. So you'll have people going but why doesn't Birr have a University? Cork has a university? Galway has a University?

Cork gets new motorway.. But what about Carrick-on-Shannon?

We've had a history of downright hostility towards creating good urban centres and an idealising of rural Ireland and scatter development.

I don't see why Cork Airport wouldn't simply call itself "Gateway to the South" or even Gateway to Munster?

That's competition!

It's the only large state owned airport in the South. Shannon is very much "the west".

It should be competing aggressively and laying claim to being a major gateway to Europe. Not pussyfooting about in case it offends its direct competitors!

I think it'd also make sense if people would just accept that SNN and ORK have different catchments and both really should be acting as a balance to Dublin, not destroying each other.

Shannon's long term role should be as a shared Galway & Limerick airport. It's highly reachable and will be very convenient to Galway city when that missing bit of motorway completes (soon).
It actually make a lot of sense as neither of those two cities are currently big enough on their own to support a large airport and Galway City has had its very small airport die entirely.

SpaceTime

SpaceTime wrote: »

It's the only large state owned airport in the South. Shannon is very much "the west".

Take the road from Cork to Letterkenny, Shannon cork and Kerry are all in the first quarter of that distance. They would all be considered south by most of the country and tourists alike.

Shannon is only separated from Kerry and Limerick by the Shannon estuary. The Vast majority of Shannons passengers head to Munster Clare Tipp Kerry and Cork.

The biggest town in Galway is Tuam and there 90 minutes from Shannon(Cork city and most of Munster is much closer than that), 35 min from Knock and just over two hours from Dublin.

SpaceTime

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Take the road from Cork to Letterkenny, Shannon cork and Kerry are all in the first quarter of that distance. They would all be considered south by most of the country and tourists alike.

Shannon is only separated from Kerry and Limerick by the Shannon estuary. The Vast majority of Shannons passengers head to Munster Clare Tipp Kerry and Cork.

I fail to see why that's relevant?

SuperValu and Dunne's both claim to be Ireland's best supermarket etc etc.. Absolutely no reason why Cork shouldn't grab a much broader slogan in marketing.

None of the three major airports have territorial exclusivity.

What I'm saying is Cork Airport isn't being aggressive enough in how it's marketing itself. It's a big, high spec regional airport and it's crazy not to be pushing it much harder!

These facilities are an enormous selling point for anyone doing business in the South of Ireland generally!

From business passenger numbers point of view for European fights SNN should be stressing that it's an hour from Galway though. It's going to be a very short drive very soon.

SpaceTime

SpaceTime wrote: »

What I'm saying is Cork Airport isn't being aggressive enough in how it's marketing itself. It's a big, high spec regional airport and it's crazy not to be pushing it much harder!

These facilities are an enormous selling point for anyone doing business in the South of Ireland generally!

Of course they should say that there are a gateway or whatever but Shannon will say the exact same thing. They are competing for the same passengers.

SpaceTime

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Of course they should say that there are a gateway or whatever but Shannon will say the exact same thing. They are competing for the same passengers.

Some of the same passengers. Cork's actually physically closer to a much larger population than Shannon is.

Both should really be pulling a lot of passengers from the Middle of Ireland and even as far as outer Dublin rather than attempting to go head to head tbh.

SpaceTime

SpaceTime wrote: »

Both should really be pulling a lot of passengers from the Middle of Ireland and even as far as outer Dublin rather than attempting to go head to head tbh.

Most people within a reasonable distance of Dublin will use Dublin as they have the routes and frequency. Most people north of the line from Galway - Dublin will Use Dublin Knock or Belfast. There is also excellent motorway connections from the South to Dublin. It really leaves Cork and Shannon confined to a mostly Munster market with Kerry and Waterford also nibbling on it.

Therefore Cork and Shannon have to compete to keep there own doors open as there both way under capacity. Shannon is already going head to head with Cork which is why Cork is losing routes. If Cork doesn't start defending itself it will continue to lose routes. If there was one airport for the region Ryanair would not be able to play them off against each other, at the moment they can.

SpaceTime

Still though Cork's handling significantly more passengers than Shannon.

SNN - 1.639 mil. (peak 3.6 mil) - dramatic reduction after the end of the SNN stopover.
ORK - 2.144 mil. (Peak: 3.25mil)

I think you'll see Cork's stats improve though.

Only thing I would say is that Shannon tends to have very inflated figures historically due to the stopover and also due to counting US soldiers passing through as passengers.

Cork's at least just a genuine, non inflated commercial airport that gets absolutely zero special treatment. So it's stats are very much real and show sustainability long term once the economy turns up. So when it was handling 3.25m that was actually Cork traffic not stopovers from Dublin to the US/Canada.

I think Cork's biggest loss has probably been fights to Eastern European destinations. As the economy turned down and the construction boom ended so did a lot of the traffic between here and Poland etc

JCX BXC

Deleted User wrote: »

Cork and Shannon airports will only be an hour apart from each other once the M20 is completed.

Corks big problem if they get independence will be competing with Shannon. Shannon has no debt as the 100 million debt was paid off by the taxpayers. They also have a yearly 13 million rental income from state property to subsidise the airport which helps undercut everybody else which was also given by the taxpayers. After a bailout of that magnitude it was obvious that the government will do what it takes to keep Shannon open whatever the cost. Nobody in Cork appeared to care when Shannon got the bailout when it should of been obvious that Cork would suffer as a result. There is only so many passengers to go around.

Your also forgetting that Cork will also have to compete with Kerry and Waterford which are even closer than Shannon, albeit very small. Commonsense would of seen one large common airport for the region positioned between Limerick and Cork, but that's unlikely now. Politicians should be ashamed when you consider that hundreds of millions was spent on both airports in the past 20 years and both are now struggling. It would of paid for a modern new airport in a better location.

I will have fun again:P

Shannon did not get their debt written off by the tax payers, the DAA wrote it off and it has absolutely no effect on the state finances.

Kerry has a tiny few routes which don't really effect cork much and Waterford will soon have none.

Blah blah blah you don't really give a dam about cork you only want to give Shannon a nice big whack as usual.

If they have any common sense, Knock wouldn't have been built out in the middle of nowhere would it? Shannon and Cork are far better positioned. Not nice have your points turned around is it?

The problem I see in Ireland and it's totally relevant to this is that a mentality of Dublin vs Down the Country exists both in Dublin and in rural areas.

It's resulted in very poor focus on the 4 other cities which should be priorites as regional hubs.

I find in debate there's often this nonsense that every non-Dublin urban area is the same size. So you'll have people going but why doesn't Birr have a University? Cork has a university? Galway has a University?

I agree completely. People here are too afraid to tell what's what and just argue non-sensible points. Due to this, there are 2 categories in terms of priority, Dublin, and the rest. There should be 3, Dublin, other large cities and then the rest.

Take the road from Cork to Letterkenny, Shannon cork and Kerry are all in the first quarter of that distance. They would all be considered south by most of the country and tourists alike.

Shannon is only separated from Kerry and Limerick by the Shannon estuary. The Vast majority of Shannons passengers head to Munster Clare Tipp Kerry and Cork.

The biggest town in Galway is Tuam and there 90 minutes from Shannon(Cork city and most of Munster is much closer than that), 35 min from Knock and just over two hours from Dublin.

You cannot change geographical evidence on the fact that people in donegal see Shannon as "south".

If your saying galway gets little tourism out of shannon airport, then you are fooling yourself. Galway gets a hell of alot of tourists from shannon, as much or even more than from Knock (Mainly from T/A).

Forget Tuam, Galway has something bigger than Tuam. Its called galway city. Galway is equally as far from Knock as it is from Shannon. Shannon has a big effect on galway.

Abbeyfeale is a big town in limerick and is closer to shannon than cork. Your point being?

Most people within a reasonable distance of Dublin will use Dublin as they have the routes and frequency. Most people north of the line from Galway - Dublin will Use Dublin Knock or Belfast. There is also excellent motorway connections from the South to Dublin. It really leaves Cork and Shannon confined to a mostly Munster market with Kerry and Waterford also nibbling on it.

I will politely disagree on that point. Sure alot of people near dublin go to Dublin. But the financially smart person will go with the cheapest option. That's rarely Dublin in the case of a direct route.

SpaceTime

Long term, I think Shannon is definitely going to be a Galway-Limerick Airport though. It's got scope as a minor transatlantic hub for IAG and others if it plays its cards right though too which might improve frequencies in and out of the UK, assuming that pre-clearance isn't extended to British airports at some stage in the future.

The M18 puts Shannon in FAR better time to Galway City than and surrounds than Knock is.

Knock is a very odd location for an airport tbh. If anything, I think it may have damaged Galway City's prospects of ever having a viable airport, although at least with the M18, Shannon's an hour a way.

The far Northwest i.e. Donegal is probably more logically served from Derry City not Knock really. It at least has a fairly decent population to keep it ticking over long-term.

The UK is currently in talks with the US to get pre-clearance agreements in which case, SNN's really not going to be anything special.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/11/uk-us-security-checks-passengers

It would mean the pre-clearance system being extended to the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands at the very least and probably a few more it's not clear exactly who they're talking to about this but it's probably that pre-clearance would become the norm across Western Europe and possibly both-ways too into the Schengen zone anyway.

It could be rejected for data protection / sovereignty at airports reasons. Ireland was fairly quick to jump at the pre-cleareance idea, other countries may not be so quick to allow US security to operate on the ground in their airports and I don't know if the US would allow European security checks to operate on US soil, so it might never take off but, you'd never know.

The Irish deal's very one-sided as we've no rights to do pre-clearance from the US on a similar basis.

irishguy1983

Lambofdave wrote: »

Another potential death nail in Cork airport


Irish Rail plan to link Dublin Airport with rest of country

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/irish-rail-plan-to-link-dublin-airport-with-rest-of-country-30936601.html

Yeah I found that surprising - it's like they want EVERYONE to fly from Dublin. I've no interest in travelling 3/4 hours to Dublin before getting a flight. I doubt the other half million Cork folk do either. Get more,cheaper flights and the whole of Munster/edges of Leinster will use Cork airport - there is enough population sustain. I know there is more pop in Dublin but Cork and surrounding area has enough.

SpaceTime

That article makes no sense to be honest and Irish Rail would be kidding themselves if they thought people would go on a 3h30min trip for about €70 to get from Cork to Dublin airport for a flight.

You'd drive it significantly quicker than that!

Where that rail link will have a major impact is Dublin and probably Belfast (assuming they get permission to run a direct service to Belfast Central)

Mostly, I suspect it'll facilitate passengers getting to Dublin City / Suburbs from Dublin Airport via DART.

Ireland's not France and we don't have high-speed rail to feed a massive airport like Charles de Gaulle. We have trains that struggle to get up to 100mph on pretty crappy tracks and low density intercity routes.

Even with ultra high speed TGVs, people in France still don't all flock to CDG to fly point-to-point either.

Dublin Airport would definitely benefit from a rail link though, it's just not going to be something that's going to be connecting up Cork, Limerick and Galway in anything approaching the real world.

SpaceTime

SpaceTime wrote: »

Long term, I think Shannon is definitely going to be a Galway-Limerick Airport t

If that was true It should be having no effect on Cork airport then. But, Obviously it is having a major affect on Cork and will overtake it very soon.

Once the M20 is completed Cork city residents will be a short drive from Shannon. Ryanair might rechristen it Cork airport , only an hour from Cork....
For an odd location Knock just had its best year ever with numbers continuing to increase. Derry has only five routes in total. Its obvious where Shannon is drawing its increasing passenger numbers from.

Ryanair may be cut throats but Cork will need them back in numbers if they are to stop the rot. How they do entice them and still make money i don't know....maybe introduce a €10 departure tax . The airport can't stick their head in the sand and expect it to fix itself, the government don't care and are not supporting it. They have to be a bit pro-active and get rid of the DAA first.

irishguy1983

[Deleted User] wrote: »

If that was true It should be having no effect on Cork airport then. But, Obviously it is having a major affect on Cork and will overtake it very soon.

Once the M20 is completed Cork city residents will be a short drive from Shannon. Ryanair might rechristen it Cork airport , only an hour from Cork....
For an odd location Knock just had its best year ever with numbers continuing to increase. Derry has only five routes in total. Its obvious where Shannon is drawing its increasing passenger numbers from.

Ryanair may be cut throats but Cork will need them back in numbers if they are to stop the rot. How they do that and still make money i don't know....maybe introduce a €10 departure tax . The airport can't stick their head in the sand and expect it to fix itself, the government don't care. They have to be a bit pro-active and get rid of the DAA first.

When is the Cork - Limerick road being complete? I thought that was off the table, no?

irishguy1983

irishguy1983 wrote: »

When is the Cork - Limerick road being complete? I thought that was off the table, no?

Its now apparently the priority road to be built by the government. But there is an election coming up so.......
With the new 300 Billion infrastructure fund in Europe it has a great chance of proceeding.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055372963&page=101

JCX BXC

Let's just say the next 10 years in Irish aviation will be interesting. Especially in the survival of the Irish regional airports. No stopovers anymore (unless the airline chooses to, eg AIR Transat last year), debt write offs, the threat of Aer Lingus pulling services, Ryanair aggression.

We may see some big changes in the regional airport front. I can't guess what they will be.

skallywag

AER Lingus is to be sold for €1.4bn after the board of the company said it’s willing to recommend a higher takeover bid by IAG, the owner of British Airways.

Heathrow slots in jeopardy ...

SpaceTime

The biggest risk to SNN is the now likely possibility that UK airports might get US pre-clearence facilities in the next couple of years. These are currently being negotiated with at least five EU countries.

The UK is more likely to sign up than the other EU countries due to lack of Schengen complications.

roundymac

skallywag wrote: »

AER Lingus is to be sold for €1.4bn after the board of the company said it’s willing to recommend a higher takeover bid by IAG, the owner of British Airways.

Heathrow slots in jeopardy ...

How do you make that out?