Significant drop in flights from smaller airports compared to the past?

chasing_ghosts · 16-06-2023 12:02am #1

Hey everyone,

I ended up in Waterford Airport today to have a gander at a Metroliner that came in for a cargo flight. I was surprised to find that the terminal was still in good nick inside, obviously due to the aero club being in operation etc.

It got me thinking (and Googling) about the regional flights around Ireland that used to operate in the past (10+ years ago).

Obviously better road links around the country are the better option and kill off most flights but even so, there were a few interesting sectors like Galway-Waterford-Europe and back, for example. Whatever happened to these routes? Did they just die with Aer Arann? I find it strange that the likes of Emerald haven't really expanded much out of Dublin other than Cork (although it's still early days).

Looking back at old posts and Youtube videos, Irish aviation seemed to be so much more interesting than it is now.

I guess I kinda already know the answer but it's rattling around in my brain now!

Noxegon · 16-06-2023 8:59am

There was a Galway-Waterford-London flight at one point. I seriously considered taking it for a jolly – but by the time I got round to it it was gone.

Hotblack Desiato · 17-06-2023 2:43pm

It's amazing to think of the number of airlines established (and failed!) here in the late 90s and 00s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_airlines_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland

thomil · 19-06-2023 1:53pm

One thing that would be worth considering in that regard is the growth of passenger expectations and aircraft. Many of what are now considered regional or commuter airliners (ATR42/72, Embraer E-Jets, the CRJ family) would have been considered mainline aircraft even in the 1980s or 1990s. The regional aircraft of those days, the Shorts 330/360, Swearingen Metroliner, Dornier 228 and so on, just wouldn't cut it today, both from an economy standpoint and from the point of view of passenger expectations. And while passenger numbers may have been big enough to fill a twenty-seater or thirty-seater aircraft to such a point that the airline at least broke even on whatever route they were operating, the same might not be the case if you'd put an ATR 42, or even a Dornier 328 on that route.

All of which does not take into consideration the absolute riot you'd cause if you'd try to get customers accustomed to modern air travel into a Metroliner. I've had people who were flying with me on an Aer Lingus ATR from Bristol to Cork complain about being "shoved into a WW 2 bomber", despite the fact that the ATR is probably the most comfortable aircraft in Aer Lingus' short-haul fleet in my experience. While I'd pay good money to watch your typical load of "spade and shovel" Ryanair passengers come face to face with a Shorts 360, that is unfortunately not a stable economic basis for an airline.

It is likely this combination of slowly increasing passenger expectations and shifting economies that has been a significant contributing factor in killing many of these regional routes.

EchoIndia · 19-06-2023 6:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120734971#Comment_120734971

It's a bit hard to discern exactly the point being made here. Aircraft types that exist in a given time period are what is offered to passengers and they can chose to fly in them or not. I was in the USA in the 1980s and types in use as feeders for mainline carriers included DHC-7s, Twin Otters, Short 330s and 330s, Beech 99s, Martin 404s, Metroliners, SAAB 340s and DC-3s. Europe also had its commuter operations, though generally not on such a scale. Other than a few SAABs, these types are effectively extinct as far as passenger ops are concerned and the ATR family is the only mass-production medium turboprop still being made. (The comments about "WW2 bombers" reflect nothing more than ignorance and, as stated, the present-day passenger experience on the ATR is pretty OK for the short-haul routes on which they are deployed in Ireland and the UK.)

In the US, the supplanting of the variety of non-jet types by larger turboprops and then jets saw quite a few communities lose services as their airports were unable, in infrastructural or market terms, to support the larger types. I think you can say the same for a few of the Irish regional airports such as Galway, Waterford and Sligo, which were never really intended for jet services. The development of the road network also changed the rationale for several domestic routes.

The LCC model which sees 737-800s and Maxes deployed on short regional routes from the larger airports outside Dublin obviously works for the market because of the low cost base achieved and there can't really be much, if any, market left for the remaining regional airports, Galway having closed to commercial use and Sligo and Waterford not having had scheduled services for many years.

chasing_ghosts · 20-06-2023 3:20pm

Thanks for the replies everyone. There are some interesting points made.

I'd counter the WW2 bomber comments with an anecdote, a lot of my friends who are not into aviation have been very interested in the "strange" flights I've been taking, in aircraft such as ATRs, Fokker 50s and BN Islanders. I think people would be happy to get into a smaller, arguably more comfortable aircraft than that of Ryanair etc. But regardless, it wouldn't be near enough to warrant demand. The only relevance of the Metroliner was because it was in on a strange cargo mission, not that I ever expect to see anything like it on a pax service.

EchoIndia I think you're right, with a lot of those aircraft based in the UK, or even on W rotations from DUB, I guess it's pretty easy to serve airports such as KIR, NOC etc without making too much of an investment. It's an odd strategy but seems to work well. I guess one could argue that with a runway extension at WAT, the same method could be used ex-LTN/STN/MAN.

Seems like Aer Arann was the main culprit for those strange regional routes, and the fact that it failed for them is enough to deter anyone from even trying it, even if they have similar aircraft types (EI).

At the end of the day, Ireland has a much higher degree of connectivity with new motorways built so I guess it's a lot easier to just bomb down the road to one of the larger airports and get a cheaper fare from there. As someone who would love to see a new service ex-WAT with a runway extension, it's not exactly a hardship driving/getting public transport to Dublin for a wide variety of route options at a decent fare, compared to paying a presumably higher price for one or two infrequent routes from Waterford (hypothetically).

I wonder in a few decades time, will those new smaller, electric aircraft bring a new era of regional connectivity throughout Ireland? Could short and thin routes be made possible?

EchoIndia · 20-06-2023 5:30pm

Of course the cessation of the PSO subsidisation in respect of Sligo (not sure about Galway) knocked the domestic link to Dublin on the head also.

cson · 20-06-2023 5:44pm

I think the motorway network, both to Dublin and Shannon knocked out any hope Galway Airport had of being a sustainable business. They both have better connections to Galway City than the airport in Carnmore had.

Hopefully the likes of the M20 & N21 improvements will feed a return to the numbers SNN was putting up during the Celtic Tiger (~3m vs ~2m these days).

IngazZagni · 20-06-2023 6:44pm

Did the celtic tiger numbers include the Shannon stopover from Dublin? This was phased out in 2008.

Waterford had its highest pax numbers in 2008 and In 2009 the motorway to Dublin was completed dramatically cutting the time it took to drive there.

As far as I can see regional airports are doing well and Knock, Kerry and Cork are seeing near record pax numbers helped mainly by 1 airline. Waterfords future is still questionable though.

EchoIndia · 20-06-2023 9:53pm

I don't think Cork really belongs in the "regional" category in the same way as the others; it has been in operation since the early 1960s, with a decent terminal and two proper runways, and has long had connections to the UK and further afield.

Irish Steve · 20-06-2023 10:38pm

This thread makes for some interesting reading, but as always, the elephant in the room is vested interests, and they have been a significant factor in so much of what happened at places like Galway and Sligo.

The early success for Galway, Sligo and Waterford was Ryanair's operation with ATR42's but the reality was that much larger aircraft were limited at those runways, Aer Lingus were operating Galway with the Short's 360's and they were able to get in and out without any real issues, then the Saab 340 replaced the Shorts, then the F50 came along, and the unfortunate reality was that the F50 was limited by runway length and width issues, especially at Galway, and of course, back in those days, there were no precision aids to enable operations in poor weather conditions, which were common, and the Telecom mast to the west of the airport at Galway caused problems with approaches from the west, due to obstacle clearance limits, ADF/DME approaches were just not accurate enough.

Not long after Ryanair abandoned ATR operations, there was a group of Galway businessmen who made sterling efforts to start a new operation, Eurowest, which would have had a significant number of former Ryanair people working with it, the plan being to operate the same routes that Ryanair had served with some success, but the local politics of Galway airport, especially between the owners of Galway airport and the designated CEO of Eurowest, and some issues with the IAA meant that despite having staff in place, and Pilots type rated to fly the ATR 42, they never got the AOC that was essential to the start up, and they ran out of funding before they got off the ground.

Aer Arran then got up and running at Galway, and managed to get services running to a number of locations, but there were still significant limitations at Galway, with issues on the runway length and width, which restricted the use of larger aircraft, it was just possible to get BAE 146's in and out of Galway, but not fully loaded, and the width of the runway made it difficult to operate to normal cross wind limits.

Sligo had a PSO operation, but that ran into issues, and Euroceltic got the PSO contract in 2002, and were operating services to Sligo using much older F27 aircraft, one of which ran off the end of the runway in November 2002, and the operator ceased trading in early 2003, Aer Arran regained the PSO contract, which was terminated in 2011, Sligo has not had a scheduled operator since then.

The big drawback to most of the regional airports for a long time was the uncertainty of reliable operations due to weather conditions, and runway lengths and widths that made jet operations impossible. Galway in particular suffered, and there were several proposals put forward to improve things, but none came to fruition, and the massive downturn in the economy from 2008 onwards was the beginning of the end, and the motorway to Dublin changed the economics of travel for the Galway area, and Aer Arann services eventually ended in 2011, some of that termination being as a resulr of the increasing difficulty of competing against the lower cost flights on offer from Dublin, which had become much more accessible when the motorway opened, and the earlier ATR42 didn't have the range to reliably serve european destinations non stop from Galway.

If Eurowest had managed to get into operation, things would probably have been very different for me, I spent some time working with them on getting technical support services for ground handling ready to go, and the plan was that once things were settled, I was going to move over to flight operations, as I had a CPL/IR at the time, but that never happened, and a while later I got involved with some complex PC based flight simulation systems, and ended up going in a different direction. Such is life.

goingnowhere · 21-06-2023 9:11am

The turning point really came in 2005-2009

Motorways started to appear.

Massive improvement in rail services, hourly Cork, two hourly to Sligo, discounted fares and Wi-Fi started to appear. EU regs now ban PSO's if the train takes less than 3 hours for the same route. So that kills Galway, Waterford, and Sligo is marginal.

On top of that flights to Galway, Sligo (and Cork) were well known for diversions due weather, I know many who simply gave up on Galway and switched to the train

Chris_5339762 · 22-06-2023 8:25pm

They had a Galway - Waterford - Amsterdam flight on an RJ-45 I think it was. Just missed that one too, annoyed because the Galway - Waterford jolly will never return.

I did land in Galway once, that was fun.

embraer170 · 01-07-2023 10:58am

Kerry airport is certainly busier than it has ever been both in terms of movements and passenger numbers. The place is also over run by business jets, which you did not have at all 20-30 years ago.

Off the top of my head, Farranfore in the the late 1990s:

Before Are Arann took over, two daily Are Lingus PSO flights to Dublin: a morning flight 6am with a Bae 146 (aircraft night-stopped in Kerry getting in around 11pm the night before) and a lunchtime flight with a Fokker 50. Before the Bae 146 / Fokker combo, one saw Shorts 360s and later Saab 340s. The weekend schedule was adjusted with no Dublin - Kerry on Saturday night or Kerry - Dublin on Sunday morning. During the peak summer (Saturday or Sunday, I can't quite recall), there was also some kind of Dublin - Kerry - Frankfurt / Dublin - Kerry - Dusseldorf (Boeing 737-500/400), aimed mainly at the German tourist traffic.

Ryanair 737-200s to Stansted a few times a week.

Manx ATPs to Luton (and maybe to Manchester?).

A weekly Crossair Saab 2000 peak summer charter operation to Zurich.

Some charter services to Lourdes and other places. I don't know if I am remembering wrongly (or making it up altogether), but there might once have been an Airbus A310 (TAP Air Portugal) that operated one of these charters into Kerry. It it really happened, it's the only wide body that ever operated into the airport.