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

Not up front in Business Class, where I was sitting, but Economy seemed pretty full. Almost all German from what I heard. I'm coming back on the Friday flight, I'll try to have a closer look then.

Cork Airport have revised the projected figures for 2023 up to 2.6 million. That is about 50k more than 2019 and would be the busiest year since 2009 for the airport. Given the pullback from Airlingus during and after covid it's a great achievement. The summer 24 schedule will be huge, if the airlines buy in you'd think 3 million pax would be not far out of reach. The Ryanair winter 24' schedule has been a bit underwhelming so far, hopefully we can see some new routes to reward the buy in over this winter period.

@TheBetsy As a follow-up, the return flight today, LH984, was pretty full. The Economy class cabin had one empty row as did Business, gut beyond that, almost every row was full. I'd say the jet was more than 80% full, possibly closer to 90%. Pretty good mix of German, Irish and other nationalities and well.

Oh, and I like the CRJ-900 even less now. Those fold-out stairs are an accident waiting to happen when they're wet.

If I remember correctly it last ran in W21/22 it was dropped as a winter route for the winter season just gone along with Malaga which is now just summer seasonal.

Aarhus was probably a one off special event flight.

I'm confused, was this service to Seville not already announced with the other services? Why is it getting sole mention now? New service to La Rochelle kicks off this bank holiday too, no mention of that.

Very odd reporting, I've seen it since replicated among several other low quality media outlets.

It appears EMA is going to 3pw and I cant see any prior mention of that, but who knows maybe this isn't recent.

Maybe Seville isnt selling as well as they hopped. Would be serious heat there during the timeframe of the service. Would be an ideal march oct destination

Seville is already loaded into Ryanair's winter schedule

interesting article with the head of the DAA on Cork airport. Key points:

Pax estimates for this year have been revised up again to 2.7 million, meaning 2023 will easily surpass 2019.

He sees 3.5-4 million pax in the close future and 5 million pax by the end of the decade.

He is bearish on transatlantic and says airlines won’t look at Cork until next year at the earliest.

He is bullish on European capitals and specifically calls out Lisbon, Madrid and Berlin as key targets for year round routes.

He also foresees a return of the Cork Dublin route at a much lower frequency than before (amazingly this had 500k pax at one stage) and essentially says it would be used to feed transatlantic traffic.

The old terminal will (eventually, his words) be knocked and the space will be used to facilitate planes and pedestrian access. It seems the plans for another business park are gone

Yeah, that passport control checkpoint is way too small. What were they thinking when they designed that? I mean, it's better than whatever Hogwartian/TARDISesque maze Frankfurt airport have managed to pull off in Terminal 1 there, but come on, that's claustrophobia waiting to happen once it gets crowded!

It would work for transatlantic if you can buy it through Aer Lingus. Security at Cork, fly up to Dublin, two hour layover in Dublin airport doing preclearance, then off to go to America.

Or feed into Aer Lingus's much larger route network through Dublin.

They were thinking of doing it again just before Covid, but I still reckon it would work for feeding transfer passengers.

I think he's right about transatlantic. It would be nice, but Cork doesn't NEED it. We don't need Cork, Shannon AND Dublin offering New York services.