Cork Airport - *Read Mod Note in First Post Before Posting*

Schedule changed in 2022. I used to use CDG for transfers, that option is gone. It's just LHR and AMS left. You can use Rome in winter only, and zurich in summer only. BA/Airlingus don't talk to eachother properly, so the check-in is a mess, the air-miles are a mess, the notifications of changes or delays is a mess, always transferring terminals burns time. Realistically I can't do work travel when based in Cork anymore, the airport service is so poor now. It's degraded to a ryanair holiday hangar and a satellite of the UK.

Yeah, you're right, Rome is a destination, unless you self-transfer.

Nov - feb are 4 working months. There is usually less business travel in july / Aug anyway as people are on holidays so those 4 missing months are significant. I've done it for years, with a slight dip for Covid and unfortunately I see it getting harder, not easier to get to the places I need to go, from that airport. Don't get me wrong, the airport itself is a dream, my favourite anywhere. but just so wasted as a good piece of infrastructure. If you look at the departures, the place is a ghost town half the day. So, it is easier for cork people who have the option to relocate, to consider being based near frankfurt or amsterdam, or anywhere on mainland europe because then you get the option of trains or driving too.

Actually it would be great to see it return for summer season. V popular spot for families

I wonder what % of overall capacity they are at... I would have assumed that they are limited by the runway rather than the airport building or gates. But both Cork and Dublin only have 2 runways, using one at a time, depending on wind conditions. So they must be able to land and take-off a flight every few minutes. In that case it's the gates are the limiter, not the runway. let's do some back of envelop numbers based on gates.

In Dublin January passengers were 2.1MM. Corks had 162k in the same period. Cork has 6 gates. Does Dublin have 200 gates or 100 gates?

If I do the sums, Cork had 27000 passengers per gate in a month, less than 1000 people per day. Dublin had 10500 passengers per gate if they have 200 gates. If 100 gates, Dublin had 21000 passengers per gate.

You can fit, say, an average of 150-180 people on a ryanair sized flight, say 150 assuming not full flights. So, around 6 flights per day, per gate for Cork currently is what they run at. There are conservatively 14 working hours in the day, and airports can get 2 flights per hour through each gate. 6 gates. That's 168 potential max flights a day. And they run at 36.

So, by those numbers, Cork is operating at ~ 21% of it's possible capacity. Could go up to 800,000 passengers per month.

Plenty more opportunity there.

...and don't forget the east/west runway can't be used by jets, it's too short. And since Aer Arran / Stobart / etc disappeared, theres no commercial aviation using it, just private stuff.

Are the new scanners installed yet? Have a feeling its Shannon only, but heading out on Friday so wouldn't mind being ready

Nope and I'm sure they won't be for a while yet. Maybe the end of this year if they are lucky.

Funding was announced and I imagine the next step will be to go to tender for purchase. It won't happen terribly quickly.

Wow - that's a hell of a long time.

Seems a very long time but I wonder will there be building works and all the planning/care that goes into that? Or whether they'll bundle other stuff with it?

Excellent news. Both to see Aer Lingus regional return but also fixing the missing connection to South West England as well as easy access to South Wales as well.

Incredible news!

Stobart used to do this too on some routes, 6 days a week with the Saturday flight omitted. Never made sense to me.

Great to see the turboprops return to cork.

What key airports are not being served(by any airline) that were served by Stobart Air since Bristol has been announced? Is it just Glasgow which needs to be filled?

This is excluding the seasonal routes

As far as I know, the FlyBe Cardiff route was more designed to grab some subsidies from the Welsh government who wanted to see Cardiff airport utilized more, than it was for purely economic reasons.

Weren't there also seasonal routes to one of the Channel Islands, either Jersey or Guernsey, that were operated by Stobart from Cork? Wouldn't consider them a key route per se, but it certainly added to the available destinations from Cork,

Barcelona is another major one from pre covid which hasn’t returned.