Baldonnell as a freight hub?

The investment required from the DOD would be probative. Also the investment needed from a ground handler
....For starters

You’d need a ground handling agent who’d need to invest cash in...

Staff -

Ramp agents, loadmasters, operations, flight dispatchers, GSE maintenance, managers etc..

Ground handling equipment -

High loaders, low loaders, belt loaders, pushback tugs, ground power units, tow tractors for transfer of freight, dollys. trucks with roller beds.

All at least x2... that stuff costs BIG time. The air corps won’t be lending their gear or staff to a civilian operator.

A lot less hassle to say to DHL, UPS and their competition at DUB that they want to pre book, xx number of positions on their aircraft, build freight on pallets / ulds. Might need to bring in a bigger aircraft but the extra volume will pay the extra cost,

Office space -

Folks doing flight paperwork, weight and balance, dangerous goods manifest, all that needs to be considered and ALL that paperwork needs filing for xx days... DOD won’t be building office space.

Chania in Crete is joint civilian and military.

US Navy in Souda base uses it.

Hence why the whole area is pixelated in Google maps.

Baldonnel is not an all weather airport. Cargo operators want to be able to land all year round and not face the prospect of having to divert to Dublin. The funds needed to upgrade BAL would far outweigh the financial benefits to the State.

Space will be a huge issue airside, you’ll need space for parking of at least two widebody / narrow body jets.

You’ll need storage for 50 plus or so Ulds / pallets and nets.

Parking space and maintenance for ALL the extra GSE ... two highloaders, two low loaders ( depending on aircraft types maybe more ) and multiple mulags, dollys, spill kits...

Looking at the google maps view of baldonnel...I’d say a non starter unless there would be a serious redesign of the ramp, taxiways and added infrastructure.

You can be sure if it were to go ahead DOD won't see a penny of it.

It's far too small. Strumms is exactly right. When you see how much of Dublin Airport is consumed by cargo facilities/storage/parking, even before you consider the size of ramp space freighters need,then Baldonnel is too small, it's taxiways and probably the short runway inadequate for anything bigger than an ATR. A loaded 737 cargo aircraft would have trouble getting in and out of there and the late night noise effect on local housing would be immense. At best, limited ATR or equivalent turbo prop operations.

If you want another nail in the coffin, also consider that freight is, in normal times, concentrated in night time ops and the approach to rwy 28 which would be the most commonly used, is over a large swathe of the city suburbs.

If Baldonnel was ever going to develop into a joint commercial/military airport, it would have required building the civil apron and terminal facilities on the opposite side from the military base but the industrial estate is there now. The only thing I could possibly see as feasible in the future is a small operation to facilitate private jet traffic and other specialist GA operators. That could possibly be a little earner for the DoD that wouldn’t interfere with military ops and might be desirable if Weston finally turns into houses. This wouldn’t likely extend to accommodating flight schools and other light aircraft tootling around the pattern all day, though

SeaSlacker wrote: »

Not to mention SNN two hours drive down the road with the only runway long enough for the biggest cargo planes...

Two hours is an awful long time in terms of express cargo whose delivery commitments at the destination are enshrined in contracts whereby failure if not covered by the Warsaw Convention means shipping is free unless tech / weather intervenes which IS covered.

No cargo of an express nature is going to be going Leinster - SNN.

Cargo arrives at SNN, you may have the need to X-Ray it, ETD it, containerize it in ULDs / on pallets. Two and a bit hours driving to SNN, offloading, transit through handling agent. Freight getting airside, loaded, checked. Minimum four hours to the truck leaving Dublin and the first ULD on the aircraft in SNN. That’s a generous guesstimate but from experience.

IF DG it needs checks, loading, tie down, possible halon bottles hooked up, manifest entry, completion, crew checks...

The cost too of daily 40ft trucks shunting tones of freight DUB - SNN would be humongous, thousands a week. When you’ve got DUB at a fraction of the cost, better cargo handling facilities. Yearly savings would be huge.

Runway in DUB isn’t an issue. I’ve been loadmaster on aircraft landing with 41/42 tonnes, departing with 30+. BAL might need some work I don’t know, cheaper than not doing it.

It's all about hubs. Baldonnel isn't and likely can't become a hub. Dublin Airport is a hub and will likely expand. Using a forklift to take a container off one plane and putting it on another is a lot simpler and cheaper than adding a truck an a second forklift into the mix.

Stovepipe wrote: »

I agree. I suspect Weston will be housing in a year or two, if it even lasts that long as an airfield. It would be relatively simple to install an FBO like Signature into Baldonnel with it's own terminal and ramp space. Every municipal airport in America does it, as second nature, on airfileds often smaller than Baldonnel. You offer them cheaper parking and handling than Dublin Airport and they'd be there like a shot and the DAA would be glad to be rid of them.

I'm not so sure that DAA will be turning its nose up at any business in the short term. In the medium term, the second runway means that light(er) aircraft aren't a burden on slots.

andrewfaulk wrote: »

I am aware that this one has been picked over more than a few times, with Ryanair digging it up every so often to try and hammer the DAA on pricing.

My question is could Baldonnel end up as a 2nd airport for Dublin, handling freight rather than Pax on a limited basis.. for Amazon

A few talking points on this:

1)Amazon have opened their first Irish warehouse in the past few weeks in Greenogue business park, not more than 50m from the boundary of Baldonnel. As we all know, they are expanding their in house logistics offering, including Amazon Air with aircraft chartered from various ACMI providers(including ASL). In a post Brexit world, could the have the volume to fill a daily rotation to mainland Europe using at 737F?
2) Extra revenue for DOD through landing fees, that could be used to provide 24hr coverage on Fire and ATC

Unless Amazon changes its business model, I would expect that the Dublin warehouse will store the most commonly sold goods which will likely be delivered to the warehouse/fulfilment centre by land transport (trucks). We’ll still see a lot of Amazon packages delivered via air but those will have been handed off to the delivery system at the originating warehouse rather than be delivered from an air service provider to an Amazon warehouse and then onwards to a ground service provider.

There are so many reasons why this will never be a runner in any format that I won't waste any time listing them. Most have been mentioned already.

The only prospect of civilian ops at Baldonnel would be in the form of bizjet traffic.

Northolt are in a similar, yet not quite full comparable situation. They offer a certain amount of slots every day to civil traffic between set hours. They maintain the authority to shut the airfield down to civil ops without any notification whatsoever. Hours of operation are strict so not always conducive to business travel.

Northolt, unlike Casement is a purely operational airfield. There is almost little to no training on site, and certainly no ab-initio flight training.

Given the limited approach procedures, limited ATC, limited (current) ground services, limited runway length, limited opening hours, and little to know difference in time to time to the city, its not going to be a runner.

If you have enough money to fund a business jet, you'll dance to your own tune, not to someone else's, even if it costs a couple of grand more to have full flexibility, which is the whole point of a business jet in the first place.

Casement Cargo Ops - zero probability
Casement Bizjet Ops - almost zero probability

Put it this way, if you are a big shot (google, FB, LinkedIn) executive traveling to visit your Dublin operation (not sure if the top mgmt travel by bicycle but let's assume they do).

Would you rather operate into an airfield with existing FBO's, long runways, 24hr ops, multiple ILS/RNAV/VOR approaches.

Or operate into an airfield with the longest runway being 6000ft, (the other about 5000ft), limited hours of operation, only one precision approach to a runway which is the opposite side of the prevailing wind the majority of the time.

Maybe the latter might, depending on the set up, offer a fractionally more flexibility due to it being less busy.

I imagine it'll be a hard pill to swallow when a bizjet misses a slot because there was a Cadet doing local VFR circuits at the same time.

salamiii wrote: »

airports need large runways for large cargo planes

Haha we’re not talking about fully laden Antonovs here

bk wrote: »

Plus I don't think it is really a warehouse in the traditional sense that Amazon have set up there, it is what they call a "delivery station".

I don't think they keep any stock there, they still have the stock in their UK warehouses, it gets loaded onto trucks in the UK and then shipped to this "delivery station" every day, where it gets broken down and shipped out by their delivery partners.

Amazon don't offer any next day delivery in Ireland, it is max 2 day delivery, so the above setup works well for them, with no need for expensive airfreight.

Of course this might change with Brexit or if they decide to offer next day/same day delivery.

Have amazon not bought a large tract of land near Dublin Airport for warehouses,?