Shannon's potential

lufties

With economies picking up worldwide(Uk especially), I wondered why there isn't more airlines flying into shannon. EI and FR seem to be the only 2 flying from the UK if I'm not mistaken. The gateway to the mid west and also close proximity to limerick, its odd the place isn't booming. That, along with all a/c maintenance and leasing businesses operating from there, you'd think there would be more demand, Emirates?

murphaph

By UK standards Limerick and Galway are medium size towns. There are still too many regional airports in Ireland all stealing traffic from each other. The airports need to realise that due to the motorways Ireland is much smaller. It is no longer an onerous journey from Dublin to Galway or Limerick. The catchment area for Berlin's airports is much larger than that of Dublin's. Berlin airports serve a catchment area that goes deep into Poland as far as Poznan even. You see the minibuses all the time. The Dublin flights always have plenty of Poles on board. Further rationalisation of Irish airports is inevitable IMO.

L1011

Its catchment area is tiny. It has a huge number of transatlantic flights for its population base by any standards.

lufties

L1011 wrote: »

Its catchment area is tiny. It has a huge number of transatlantic flights for its population base by any standards.

Transatlantic yes I agree, but eastwards it is scarce with regard to airline options. The catchment area for shannon is surely close to 500k of people. I'm sure though if it was a profitable route that airlines would be capitalising on it.

fr336

Isn't it all relative, I'm in England and if I lived on the west of Ireland I wouldn't want to be going to Dublin or Cork, call me picky.

lufties

fr336 wrote: »

Isn't it all relative, I'm in England and if I lived on the west of Ireland I wouldn't want to be going to Dublin or Cork, call me picky.

Perhaps its my personal bias then, I like limerick and love the rugged clare coast, pubs and surf.

fr336

lufties wrote: »

Perhaps its my personal bias then, I like limerick and love the rugged clare coast, pubs and surf.

Sorry did you misunderstand me here? I said nothing negative about the west

Pat Dunne

fr336 wrote: »

Isn't it all relative, I'm in England and if I lived on the west of Ireland I wouldn't want to be going to Dublin or Cork, call me picky.

fr336 wrote: »

Sorry did you misunderstand me here? I said nothing negative about the west

I'll go with murphalp and L1011 on this one.

The reality is that Limerick City to DUB is a little over 2 hours by road and this would apply to a sizeable proportion of the SNN catchment area. ORK with a larger population and with a slightly longer road link to DUB is suffering its own woes in attracting PAX.

Basically boils down to a small population on a smallish island with reasonable to good road links, to the capital city/airport.

xper

lufties wrote: »

Transatlantic yes I agree, but eastwards it is scarce with regard to airline options. The catchment area for shannon is surely close to 500k of people. I'm sure though if it was a profitable route that airlines would be capitalising on it.

500k is not a big catchment population for an airport. There's 100+ cities and towns in the UK, for example, with a population bigger than Limerick's. They don't all have airports next door. Most if not all of Shannon's catchment population can also reach Cork Airport or, more importantly, Dublin Airport with relative ease. It's situated in a country that's (maybe) emerging from a deep economic crisis but not in the region that is leading that emergence.

Shannon may have a big ass runway due to a historical strategic importance, now largely redundant, but the fact is that it is a small regional airport situated in a low population density region of a small country on the edge of Europe. Frankly, having two airlines offering multiple regularly scheduled routes including trans-Atlantic is about as well as you could reasonably expect the place to be doing. If there are other profitable routes to be had out of the airport then sooner or later an airline will give it a go. They're not denying the locals choice of routes out of some sort of vendetta.

fr336

Pat Dunne wrote: »

I'll go with murphalp and L1011 on this one.
The reality is that Limerick City to DUB is a little over 2 hours by road and this would apply to a sizeable proportion of the SNN catchment area. ORK with a larger population and with a slightly longer road link to DUB is suffering its own woes in attracting PAX.

Basically boils down to a small population on a smallish island with reasonable to good road links, to the capital city/airport.

So the whole country has one airport, Dublin? God you Irish are always doing yourselves down I hear what you're saying on population and road links but still, it's a big enough country to have different areas.

xper

fr336 wrote: »

So the whole country has one airport, Dublin? God you Irish are always doing yourselves down I hear what you're saying on population and road links but still, it's a big enough country to have different areas.

I'm curious, in what way is the idea that the country's size and population supports one main international airport plus a number of regional airports with limited viable services "doing ourselves down"? Do you want to deal in terms of sustainable, economic and social development or some sort of North Korean style prestige project? The main problem with current setup is that the regional airports on the island are unevenly distributed and not ideally provisioned but the steady growth of Dublin Aiport as the the primary air travel gateway to the whole country is a no brainier.

Many people both in and outside Ireland completely fail to appreciate that the country's small total population and low population density (no other Western European country has both) has a profound effect on the provision of services and infrastructure at national, regional and local level. The default assumption is to think that we are in a similar situation to our nearest neighbour with whom we do of course have many things in common but the country's unusual demographics means you are not always comparing like with like.

Pat Dunne

fr336 wrote: »

So the whole country has one airport, Dublin? God you Irish are always doing yourselves down I hear what you're saying on population and road links but still, it's a big enough country to have different areas.

I will rise above your scurrilous utterance upon this proud nation. :P

From an aviation point of view I would suggest, that the island of Ireland, with a combined population of 5.25 million is far better served per capita, when compared to some of the regions in the UK.

For instance, take the combined area of Manchester and Merseyside, which has a similar population and serviced by just 2 airports. The island of Ireland with its 10 airports (7 in the Republic of Ireland and 3 in Northern Ireland) offers scheduled flights to UK and International destinations and is to my mind providing an equal and possibly more diverse service.

fr336

Pat Dunne wrote: »

I will rise above your scurrilous utterance upon this proud nation. :P

From an aviation point of view I would suggest, that the island of Ireland, with a combined population of 5.25 million is far better served per capita, when compared to some of the regions in the UK.

For instance, take the combined area of Manchester and Merseyside, which has a similar population and serviced by just 2 airports. The island of Ireland with its 10 airports (7 in the Republic of Ireland and 3 in Northern Ireland) offers scheduled flights to UK and International destinations and is to my mind providing an equal and possibly a more diverse service.

I'm not saying any of these points put forward by y'all are wrong, necessarily, it's just that - to me - regardless of population and distances etc, it would feel wrong for the whole of the Republic to only have one airport, Dublin. I also think, how much do the other airports contribute in terms of the local economies and employment and the whole ripple effect of this. Of course none of it's in any way comparable to the UK, but why should it be Ireland is it's own land and I say you should have at least two preferably three medium-large airports (Not wishing to be an Englishman making demands of you of course :P)

JCX BXC

Personally as someone who supports Shannon I'm actually sick of this discussion. There seems to be little middle here. FR336 has weighed the middle here a little.

People who call Shannon's catchment small and etc, yes its small, but remember Irish people still have alot of discretionary money that they spend on travel. IMO the Irish are one of the best travelled in the world. Our horrific weather and general interest in the world allows us to travel more then our peers in the UK even (in my opinion, mind). The Transatlantic market stretches from Cork to Donegal and has an amazing inbound market. That's really not up for debate.

On the other hand, Shannon will find it hard to grow, due to the stranglehold of namely EI and FR. The catchment area is rich, but its not so plentiful that all sorts of legacy carriers can try routes and fend off FR. It's slow steady growth of both inbound and outbound markets that will get Shannon to a nice level. There's no point being unrealistic, it does no-one any favours. Shannon will always struggle against Dublin, but it can fight hard to take as much as it can.

It's not going to get a 3x daily service to Dubai on the A380, but an area where I think there's space for growth is Turkish Airlines to Istanbul. A 737 is ideal for connection to the middle East currently not served from Shannon and can see it doing well. Emirates probably won't touch Shannon for a long time, if ever.

Can we please put this argument to bed with these simple facts.

*There's room for Shannon to grow.
*The catchment is small, but does travel.
*There's alot of inbound pax on TA flights.
*Shannon wont expand rapidly in a day or even a year, it will be steady or not at all.
*There is a market for flights that aren't Dublin, something that many people here seem to forget.

fr336

I'm surprised Ryanair never set up Shannon as their hub instead of Dublin you know - think of the lowering in landing fees etc. I mean it wouldn't be an issue for the Dubs to travel to Shannon, what with these easy road links

JCX BXC

fr336 wrote: »

I'm surprised Ryanair never set up Shannon as their hub instead of Dublin you know - think of the lowering in landing fees etc. I mean it wouldn't be an issue for the Dubs to travel to Shannon, what with these easy road links

Haha exactly its an issue when its the other way around.

fr336

Carnacalla wrote: »

Haha exactly its an issue when its the other way around.

I'm sure there must be a reason or dozen why they have never done it. After all FR are always radical elsewhere. Could it really be down to simple attachment to their 'home'? Doesn't sound like FR but never know... *Awaits shouts of "Don't you know Dublin is an internationally renowned city with all the other airlines including BA flying in there? Dublin is just a big deal ok?!" :P Like you say, it should be able to work the other way if these road and rail links are so convenient............

JCX BXC

Sure it wouldn't make sense! To get from SNN to DUB you go through 3 tolls. That's €6.80 for a one way trip to the airport. That alone would cause a great pain to Dubliners. Imagine having to travel!

Being realistic though it's at least 2 hours away, a little bit out of bounds for even RYR.

fr336

Carnacalla wrote: »

Sure it wouldn't make sense! To get from SNN to DUB you go through 3 tolls. That's €6.80 for a one way trip to the airport. That alone would cause a great pain to Dubliners. Imagine having to travel!

Being realistic though it's at least 2 hours away, a little bit out of bounds for even RYR.

And what about when I land in Ireland's only airport, Dublin, and want to get to the far away coast? What's the longest I might be looking at, 3-4 hours? I'd rather an airport near by please :mad::p Oh and can I just say my mother has a personal hate for Dublin airport and refuses to fly there :cool:

JCX BXC

fr336 wrote: »

And what about when I land in Ireland's only airport, Dublin, and want to get to the far away coast? What's the longest I might be looking at, 3-4 hours? I'd rather an airport near by please :mad::p Oh and can I just say my mother has a personal hate for Dublin airport and refuses to fly there :cool:

Probably handy Shannon is there so
I've heard a few cases of stubborn old Galway women pushed as hard as they can to get them to fly to DUB with EI, but they refused and flew to SNN. Regardless of cost.

Also, to make it clear, I'm not having a dig at Dublin, its a great airport and its amazing that it has such high passenger numbers and a massive growth rate, but it seems un-proportinate compared to SNN and ORK.

That's me done for the night!

yermanoffthetv

Look on TripAdvisor on the Irish fourm, alot of American visitors tend to prefer Shannon for their first visit as its closer to all the things they tend to do like the cliffs of moher,conemara, Kerry, cork etc. Also when your driving on the "wrong" side of the road in a stick shift for the first time with different road rules the M18 is is a hell of a lot less daunting than the M1.

I hate these threads, they always end up as a pissing contest between Dublin and the rest of the country with the usual "were only little" "smaller than Manchester" etc

With the new motorway to Galway and and forever promised M20 Shannon would have a fairly healthy catchment area in its own right. Yes Dublin is far bigger and more important but that doesn't mean Shannon is redundant.

fr336

yermanoffthetv wrote: »

Look on TripAdvisor on the Irish fourm, alot of American visitors tend to prefer Shannon for their first visit as its closer to all the things they tend to do like the cliffs of moher,conemara, Kerry, cork etc. Also when your driving on the "wrong" side of the road in a stick shift for the first time with different road rules the M18 is is a hell of a lot less daunting than the M1.

I hate these threads, they always end up as a pissing contest between Dublin and the rest of the country with the usual "were only little" "smaller than Manchester" etc

With the new motorway to Galway and and forever promised M20 Shannon would have a fairly healthy catchment area in its own right. Yes Dublin is far bigger and more important but that doesn't mean Shannon is redundant.

We have a winner...

mayotom

lufties wrote: »

Perhaps its my personal bias then, I like limerick and love the rugged clare coast, pubs and surf.

I can´t blame you , its one of the most beautiful parts of the world

fr336 wrote: »

So the whole country has one airport, Dublin? God you Irish are always doing yourselves down I hear what you're saying on population and road links but still, it's a big enough country to have different areas.

road links are one thing, but Ireland needs local links, Shannon will never again be what it was in the past, but it can be something special, its population base will always support regional and holiday traffic,

Carnacalla wrote: »

Personally as someone who supports Shannon I'm actually sick of this discussion. There seems to be little middle here. FR336 has weighed the middle here a little.

People who call Shannon's catchment small and etc, yes its small, but remember Irish people still have alot of discretionary money that they spend on travel. IMO the Irish are one of the best travelled in the world. Our horrific weather and general interest in the world allows us to travel more then our peers in the UK even (in my opinion, mind). The Transatlantic market stretches from Cork to Donegal and has an amazing inbound market. That's really not up for debate.

On the other hand, Shannon will find it hard to grow, due to the stranglehold of namely EI and FR. The catchment area is rich, but its not so plentiful that all sorts of legacy carriers can try routes and fend off FR. It's slow steady growth of both inbound and outbound markets that will get Shannon to a nice level. There's no point being unrealistic, it does no-one any favours. Shannon will always struggle against Dublin, but it can fight hard to take as much as it can.

It's not going to get a 3x daily service to Dubai on the A380, but an area where I think there's space for growth is Turkish Airlines to Istanbul. A 737 is ideal for connection to the middle East currently not served from Shannon and can see it doing well. Emirates probably won't touch Shannon for a long time, if ever.

Can we please put this argument to bed with these simple facts.

*There's room for Shannon to grow.
*The catchment is small, but does travel.
*There's alot of inbound pax on TA flights.
*Shannon wont expand rapidly in a day or even a year, it will be steady or not at all.
*There is a market for flights that aren't Dublin, something that many people here seem to forget.

*There's room for Shannon to grow.
yes but only regional(as in europe short haul) to the derement of Farenfore, galway and Knock. when subsidies come to an end where will the airlines
*The catchment is small, but does travel.
yes but can the area command the numbers to fill 777´s etc daily, NO unfortunately
*There's alot of inbound pax on TA flights.
how many per year , excluding military. wish it was more
*Shannon wont expand rapidly in a day or even a year, it will be steady or not at all.

Shannon needs to work on its History, it is a world class base for aircraft leasing , it needs to build on that and become a world class airport for maintenance and more, shannon has potential, lets hope it new (government employeess ) know the potential

fr336 wrote: »

I'm surprised Ryanair never set up Shannon as their hub instead of Dublin you know - think of the lowering in landing fees etc. I mean it wouldn't be an issue for the Dubs to travel to Shannon, what with these easy road links

fr336 wrote: »

I'm sure there must be a reason or dozen why they have never done it. After all FR are always radical elsewhere. Could it really be down to simple attachment to their 'home'? Doesn't sound like FR but never know... *Awaits shouts of "Don't you know Dublin is an internationally renowned city with all the other airlines including BA flying in there? Dublin is just a big deal ok?!" :P Like you say, it should be able to work the other way if these road and rail links are so convenient............

fr336 wrote: »

And what about when I land in Ireland's only airport, Dublin, and want to get to the far away coast? What's the longest I might be looking at, 3-4 hours? I'd rather an airport near by please :mad::p Oh and can I just say my mother has a personal hate for Dublin airport and refuses to fly there :cool:

poteen

Qatar Airways have been long linked with a route to Ireland. With Ethiad and Emirates saturating the Dublin Middle East route, perhaps they could look at 3 times weekly with their ever expanding 787 fleet as they did with Edinburgh?

lufties

poteen wrote: »

Qatar Airways have been long linked with a route to Ireland. With Ethiad and Emirates saturating the Dublin Middle East route, perhaps they could look at 3 times weekly with their ever expanding 787 fleet as they did with Edinburgh?

Ek fly to Newcastle upon tyne, so its not completely mad to suggest an SNN route in the future, especially that the ME carriers seem to be more concerned about flying as many routes as poss.

lufties

I work with BA at LHR and use staff travel getting to DUB, which is pretty good. BA fly a 318 from LCY to New York with a fuel stop in SNN( the old concorde route), it's a business pax only config, so unfortunately riff raff like myself can't avail of staff travel on the route :cool:

I'm holding out for Cityflyer or perhaps flybe, easyjet etc. VLM do a WAT route from LTN so surely its only a matter of time that SNN- Eastbound traffic picks up

roundymac

*There's room for Shannon to grow.



There's room for Cork to grow as well, but airlines will only fly to places like these if they can make money, and so it would appear that Dublin is the choice for them. If you look at it from an outsiders point of view Dublin would be the option. If SNN did'nt have T/A it would be in serious trouble, threason it has T/A is because that's where people want to fly. I will always fly SNN if I'm doing T/A, it might be a bad road to Cork but the size of SNN allows me to be on the road south in less than 10 minutes after collecting my bag.

murphaph

Carnacalla wrote: »

Shannon will always struggle against Dublin

Personally I think Shannon "struggles" more with Cork, Kerry and Knock and until recently even Galway (far, far too many airports in close proximity), though obviously the choice of flights from DUB makes it very serious competition.

I do believe if we had a dictatorship that I would close Cork and actually build the damn M20, allowing Corkonians to access Shannon easily. Same goes for Knock, build the M17/M18 (under construction now up as far as Tuam) and improve the N17 up to Sligo and close Knock, sending pax down the motorway 1.5 hours to Shannon. Same for Kerry, you'd expect the roads to continue to improve to a point where driving to Shannon to access a more diverse range of flights would seem sensible.

To be honest the "one airport for everyone in the audience" is symptomatic of the attitude to Irish infrastructure "planning". We are extremely parochial (even within our big cities we moan about "our area" not getting x, y or z, while such and such a place (maybe 10 mins down the road) got it.

The improving roads are making the country a much smaller place. Dublin to Cork was really once an epic trip by car, taking 5 or 6 hours. Now it can be done in less than half the time. Roads are also not as evil as people think. In the future vehicles will be non-polluting and much quieter and on the motorway probably self driving in the next 20 years. You will be able to get in your car, drive it "by hand" to the nearest motorway and then join a virtual convoy of vehicles, all communicating with each other to maintain constant speed in safety until you have to leave the motorway. You'll actually be able to get some work done in your own car on the 2 hour drive to the airport. This convoy tech already exists and has been tested by the way. It's not sci-fi stuff. It's already reality, just needs refining and legislating for.

This is where we are heading. Fewer airports, better land based transportation (aeroplanes will be amongst the last vehicles to leave oil behind as a fuel source IMO) to cater for more and more environmentally friendly vehicles (road or rail).

roundymac

The improving roads are making the country a much smaller place. Dublin to Cork was really once an epic trip by car, taking 5 or 6 hours. Now it can be done in less than half the time. Roads are also not as evil as people think. In the future vehicles will be non-polluting and much quieter and on the motorway probably self driving in the next 20 years. You will be able to get in your car, drive it "by hand" to the nearest motorway and then join a virtual convoy of vehicles, all communicating with each other to maintain constant speed in safety until you have to leave the motorway. You'll actually be able to get some work done in your own car on the 2 hour drive to the airport. This convoy tech already exists and has been tested by the way. It's not sci-fi stuff. It's already reality, just needs refining and legislating for.

So all you have to do so is build the motorway,,,

Balf

Carnacalla wrote: »

Shannon will always struggle against Dublin, but it can fight hard to take as much as it can.

For me, this sentiment is the problem (which I know is just an honest statement - I'm not having a go at the individual poster). It's this conception that the solution is something to do with Shannon taking business off Dublin.

Is there no way that Shannon could find a market that involves attracting new business, rather that redistributing the business we've already achieved.

The growth in Dublin's traffic is not really at the expense of Shannon, even if that's how local politicians like to pitch it. Many seem to feel growth at Shannon can only be achieved at the expense of Dublin. That's what causes the political pressure to obstruct Dublin's development, as if growth in Dublin is obviously bad for Shannon, when it's actually good for all of us.

What Shannon needs is a positive strategy, that doesn't mention Dublin. How about "Shannon will always struggle against Lisbon, but it can fight hard to take as much as it can."

Pat Dunne

Pat Dunne wrote: »

I will rise above your scurrilous utterance upon this proud nation. :P

From an aviation point of view I would suggest, that the island of Ireland, with a combined population of 5.25 million is far better served per capita, when compared to some of the regions in the UK.

For instance, take the combined area of Manchester and Merseyside, which has a similar population and serviced by just 2 airports. The island of Ireland with its 10 airports (7 in the Republic of Ireland and 3 in Northern Ireland) offers scheduled flights to UK and International destinations and is to my mind providing an equal and possibly more diverse service.

fr336 wrote: »

I'm not saying any of these points put forward by y'all are wrong, necessarily, it's just that - to me - regardless of population and distances etc, it would feel wrong for the whole of the Republic to only have one airport, Dublin. I also think, how much do the other airports contribute in terms of the local economies and employment and the whole ripple effect of this. Of course none of it's in any way comparable to the UK, but why should it be Ireland is it's own land and I say you should have at least two preferably three medium-large airports (Not wishing to be an Englishman making demands of you of course :P)

In my opinion your response failed entirely to address any of my points.

Your, one airport arguement is entirely incorrect. The facts state that on an island of 175 mile by 300 miles, population 5.25 million. There are currently 10 airports offering scheduled flights beyond the geographical island (excluding NNR to the Aran Islands).

I for one would be delighted if SNN, ORK or BFS had an enhanced range of scheduled destinations, offering competitive fares. I'd be more than happy to hop in my car and travel the comparatively small journey by road to do so. But the reality is that this has failed to happen over the years and is unlikely to change in the near future.

IRLConor

xper wrote: »

the country's small total population and low population density (no other Western European country has both)

Have a look at Finland. Not much bigger population than us but in a much larger area. Our population density is somewhere between 3 and 4 times bigger than theirs.

They have plenty of airports mostly running feeder flights into Helsinki but the balance of traffic is very different to here. Only a few of the airports outside of Helsinki have flights to anywhere other than Helsinki and most of those are seasonal/charter. Here are the top three airports for here and there ranked by millions of passenger in 2014:

Rank|Ireland||Finland|
1|Dublin|21.7|Helsinki|15.9
2|Cork|2.1|Oulu|1.0
3|Shannon|1.6|Rovaniemi|0.4


Bearing in mind that ~85% of passengers travelling through Oulu and Rovaniemi are domestic the performance of Cork and Shannon looks even more impressive. Oulu has a bigger, wealthier population than Limerick and has almost no direct international flights from its airport. A quick skim through Finnish airport destinations suggests that (outside of seasonal & charter flights) there are almost no flights from non-Helsinki airports to destinations other than Nordic/Baltic ones.

I'm not saying that Cork and Shannon are perfect, but with a bit of context they're actually doing rather well. The fact that they're near to good tourist destinations helps a lot. Yes, they could do better but let's not talk them down too much.

In fact, be glad that Cork & Limerick are only 2-3hours by road from Dublin otherwise there'd be a market for domestic flights which would strip international destinations away from them in favour of hubbing more passengers through Dublin.

man98

poteen wrote: »

Qatar Airways have been long linked with a route to Ireland. With Ethiad and Emirates saturating the Dublin Middle East route, perhaps they could look at 3 times weekly with their ever expanding 787 fleet as they did with Edinburgh?

Tbh (as pointed out way back) the best in terms of connectivity to the east which one could hope for is Turkish, something similar to what they have in Denmark, an IST - ORK - SNN - IST service. In Denmark it's an IST - Aarhus - Billund - IST flight I believe.

highlydebased

The biggest challenge for Shannon and indeed all other Irish airports now is Dublin. Between the choice and frequency of flights plus the fact there are very cheap and frequent buses from all over the country. It's hard to compete with that in many ways.

That said, SNN really needs to get back into the UK market properly. Not saying there should be a return to boom time of 800k p/a carried SNN-UK but there needs to be an improvement on the current offering.

yew_tree

I know Knock is a godsend to many in Connacht. I know fellas working during the week in London and coming home weekends to spend a little time with family before flying back Sunday evening. They couldn't do this if they had to travel 3-3.5 hours to Dublin airport.
Studies have been done which th worth of Knock to the region in bednights and spend in the region, tourists who would otherwise maybe not bother.
The same goes for Shannon I assume. I don't except Knock which is 30mins north of me to grow into a super large airport but it serves its purpose and is doing well all things considered.

Shannon was always the airport you used to pick up the "yank" cousins home on vacation as they called it or fly out to NY, Boston etc yourself. Very handy airport too. For example I usually go over to a few Liverpool games from Knock every year...if I had to drive to Dublin first and back coming home then no I probably wouldn't do it.

lufties

yew_tree wrote: »

I know Knock is a godsend to many in Connacht. I know fellas working during the week in London and coming home weekends to spend a little time with family before flying back Sunday evening. They couldn't do this if they had to travel 3-3.5 hours to Dublin airport.
Studies have been done which th worth of Knock to the region in bednights and spend in the region, tourists who would otherwise maybe not bother.
The same goes for Shannon I assume. I don't except Knock which is 30mins north of me to grow into a super large airport but it serves its purpose and is doing well all things considered.

Shannon was always the airport you used to pick up the "yank" cousins home on vacation as they called it or fly out to NY, Boston etc yourself. Very handy airport too. For example I usually go over to a few Liverpool games from Knock every year...if I had to drive to Dublin first and back coming home then no I probably wouldn't do it.

I hear what you mean, I flew into Kerry when I lived in Frankfurt, the ease of travelling to the folks(tipp), was great. No qeues, traffic etc..and a scenic drive home. So much more convenient.

Jamie2k9

yermanoffthetv wrote: »

Look on TripAdvisor on the Irish fourm, alot of American visitors tend to prefer Shannon for their first visit as its closer to all the things they tend to do like the cliffs of moher,conemara, Kerry, cork etc. Also when your driving on the "wrong" side of the road in a stick shift for the first time with different road rules the M18 is is a hell of a lot less daunting than the M1.

I hate these threads, they always end up as a pissing contest between Dublin and the rest of the country with the usual "were only little" "smaller than Manchester" etc

With the new motorway to Galway and and forever promised M20 Shannon would have a fairly healthy catchment area in its own right. Yes Dublin is far bigger and more important but that doesn't mean Shannon is redundant.

LOL

Where did you pull that one out of, a lot of US visitors fly into DUB and out of SNN or the opposite way round. Americans have no issue with distance!

JCX BXC

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

LOL

Where did you pull that one out of, a lot of US visitors fly into DUB and out of SNN or the opposite way round. Americans have no issue with distance!

I'd say they pulled it out of TripAdvisor.

Balf

Jamie2k9 wrote: »

Where did you pull that one out of, a lot of US visitors fly into DUB and out of SNN or the opposite way round. Americans have no issue with distance!

The point is not so much distance as coping with traffic and road conditions. Adding to the anecdotes, I came across a slightly shell-shocked young American in Ballyvaughan this year. "Sir" he said (they're so polite) "could you point me to the main road to the Cliffs of Moher". Of course, there's two ways, but his girlfriend quickly spoke up "We're looking for a bigger road." The road from Kinvara seemed to have taken him to the limit of his abilities. They looked in no shape for the coast road, so I sent him the other way.

That said, I'm not sure anecdotes on Tripadvisor are representative of the plain fact that, overwhelmingly, trans-Atlantic traffic chooses to go through Dublin. Much as you hint at, most tourists visiting the West coast enter the country from the East. Tbh, that's a positive - Dublin Airport makes the West of Ireland accessible to tourists who would otherwise not bother.

Equally, stories of Mammies who'd rather stay at home than travel through Dublin have to be taken with rather a large pinch of salt. Dublin is the airport used by most people travelling to and from the island of Ireland by air. The airport is successful, and when you return back to T2 you realise it's actually a fine facility compared to what's out there.

Having said all that, are we just demonstrating the problem with Shannon is that these conversations seem to end up being about Dublin. What the regional airports need is a dialogue that doesn't involve comparison to Dublin, as none of them can fill Dublin's role in connecting us all to the world.

markpb

Balf wrote: »

that said, I'm not sure anecdotes on Tripadvisor are representative of the plain fact that, overwhelmingly, trans-Atlantic traffic chooses to go through Dublin. Much as you hint at, most tourists visiting the West coast enter the country from the East. Tbh, that's a positive - Dublin Airport makes the West of Ireland accessible to tourists who would otherwise not bother.

During the summer, over 4,000 people *per day* from Dublin to the U.S. While it's in the wrong direction, it shows the amount of people travelling on that route. If someone can point me in the direction of a TripAdvisor forum where even 1% of that contribute and say they'd prefer to fly to Shannon or Knock, I'll eat my hat.

highlydebased

I saw a link recently, possibly a CSO release, which gave % of those arriving from America and holidaying in the West who flew thru Shannon. Will try find it again.

Balf

highlydebased wrote: »

I saw a link recently, possibly a CSO release, which gave % of those arriving from America and holidaying in the West who flew thru Shannon. Will try find it again.

Do you mean this?

[I can't post URLs yet, so guess what three letters go here].shannonairport.ie/gns/about-us/latest-news/latest-news/14-10-13/Shannon_passenger_growth_delivers_more_growth_for_Kerry.aspx

If so, it's not a CSO release. It's promotional research that Shannon Airport commissioned. It's not about what proportion of US tourists visiting Kerry go through Shannon. It's just asking the minority of tourists who use Shannon what counties they visit.

I'm afraid it's actually quite a quixotic document, including the line

The research also indicated a growing trend of transatlantic passengers through Shannon visiting Dublin, with 29% reporting that they spent time in the capital compared to 17% last year.

I don't actually set out to be so negative, but I'm afraid it just happens when you confront the huge need for Shannon's management to avoid stating the awful truth that PaddyWagon probably deliver more tourists to the Cliffs of Moher than they do.

It's a bit out of date, but the basic situation was set out in a recent post on this forum.

[again, guess the URL].boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=94857768&postcount=418

Almost 7 out of every 10 overseas holiday visitors to the west currently arrive in Ireland via an east coast gateway. These holidaymakers account for 80% of overseas holiday bednights in the west.

Long Time Lurker

So my two cents (and its a very very basic take on what I think Shannon brings to Irish aviation)

But isn't Shannon just a hangover from the days of early trans Atlantic flights and in reality, had it not been for the Dessie O'Malleys and the like of this world with crazy vote buying state subsidy to the region, the reality is Shannon would have died a natural death many many moons ago.

There are more people in Tallaght & Clondalkin combined than there are in the immediate surrounding area of Shannon. It does seem such a pointless destination unless the Ruskys get outta hand big time and the yanks plan on using very long runways fast.

Expects back lash

xper

With sensible management, there's no reason for Shannon to "die". Nor is it feasible that it would have a host of airlines connecting it to every corner of Europe. It's a regional airport like many others throughout Europe operating in a highly deregulated, free market which have whatever routes the local market supports with one or two airlines dominating.

Long Time Lurker

xper wrote: »

With sensible management, there's no reason for Shannon to "die". Nor is it feasible that it would have a host of airlines connecting it to every corner of Europe. It's a regional airport like many others throughout Europe operating in a highly deregulated, free market which have whatever routes the local market supports with one or two airlines dominating.

Yes but these regional airports have millions of people around them. Shannon and surrounding area has a smaller population than Wexford, its completely inaccessible compared to the like of even Belfast say, is further away from Galway than Knock or Cork from .. eh Cork and is no longer of any benefit for Trans Atlantic routes.

Time to move on. We've seen the lessons of political pipe dream subsidy and false hope before. It just prolongs the organic growth of actual real potential expansion areas. If it was of any intrinsic value it would have grown by now on its own. Instead its been dying for generations.

fr336

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Yes but these regional airports have millions of people around them. Shannon and surrounding area has a smaller population than Wexford, its completely inaccessible compared to the like of even Belfast say, is further away from Galway than Knock or Cork from .. eh Cork and is no longer of any benefit for Trans Atlantic routes.

Time to move on. We've seen the lessons of political pipe dream subsidy and false hope before. It just prolongs the organic growth of actual real potential expansion areas. If it was of any intrinsic value it would have grown by now on its own. Instead its been dying for generations.

Just Dublin then is it?

Long Time Lurker

fr336 wrote: »

Just Dublin then is it?

No but surely if Shannon was of any benefit to itself never mind anyone else then it would have developed into a real competitor in the market place. It hasn't. Instead it lumbers from dismal performance to dismal performance.

Maybe its a question of people having to be honest with themselves. There simply isn't a need for Knock, Shannon & Cork. All they're doing is knocking each other out.

TPMP

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Yes but these regional airports have millions of people around them. Shannon and surrounding area has a smaller population than Wexford

Absolute nonsense.

Pat Dunne

fr336 wrote: »

Just Dublin then is it?

Jayus, your some Clown Troll! No smilie face!

Jamie2k9

TPMP wrote: »

Absolute nonsense.

If it's nonsense why have SNN not attracted such carriers and even ORK and NOC.....

Pat Dunne

Long Time Lurker wrote: »

Shannon and surrounding area has a smaller population than Wexford.

I suppose it all depends on what you define as a surrounding area. However if you you look at the Census for 2011, the following sats are published by the Central Statistics Office.
http://census.cso.ie/areaprofiles/

In April 2011 Wexford, had a population of 145,320, consisting of 71,909 males and 73,411 females.

In April 2011 Clare, had a population of 117,196, consisting of 58,298 males and58,898 females.

In April 2011 Tipperary, had a population of 158,754, consisting of 79,584 males and 79,170 females.

In April 2011 Limerick City & County had a population of 191,809, consisting of 95,815 males and 95,994 females.

This what I would define as the sourrounding area for Shannon. But certainly not its catchment area, which is considerably bigger.