Waterford Airport.

You can be sure they will. €50 or €100 extra for a flight you can get on where you potentially spend less on diesel to get to the airport, cheaper car parking and less time queueing in the airport itself. €100 more to avoid the hassle of Dublin airport is an absolute no brainer.

The biggest saving is time. With the bus and ferry, it usually meant almost a day wasted in just travelling to London and back. With Dublin, it was a few hours on a journey to Dublin and then the flight and, unless it used London City Airport, another train into London. Waterford airport cut hours off those trips. It might not matter for tourists but less time travelling makes a lot of sense for businesses and the people who have to do it. The key advantage that Waterford airport has over Cork or Dublin for people in the SE is time saved.

Regards...jmcc

So your solution is to move the airport closer to dublin airport? Closer to it's competition, where we already have people say Waterford airport is too close to Dublin and cork airports but you want to move it closer to Dublin!

You are also not factoring in moving a half hour north, you are on land that is higher above sea level and more effected by fog which causes more diversions/cancellations.

Waterford Airports current location has a 600k population within 1hours drive of the airport, you can not tell me that is not convenient for those 600k people.

If you go back a few posts you will see times posted of how long it takes to travel from Carlow, Kilkenny, goery, enniscorthy, Wexford, rosslare, clonmel, carrick, dungarvan, Waterford and Tramore

Even take Carlow, the furthest away, 1hr 1min to Waterford airport, 1hr 3min to Dublin airport red long term car park, factor in the transport from the long term car park getting through Dublin airport and even Carlow had a saving of 30+ mins

Just keep in mind the 600k is a Rob Cass number that he has never back up and makes literally no sense to anyone who looks at the demographics and a map, there are 450k in the entire South East region based on this years census, you can add in Clonmel and a couple of villages around it but that's not getting you close to the 150k needed. Also putting Gorey as an hours drive from Waterford is extremely ambitious.

I'd pay the extra €50/€100 for convenience of not having to drive to Dublin or Cork and sure you'd save on fuel getting there. Saving on time travelling. Not seeing too many negatives here if your living in the south east or surrounds.

You never know, with the north quays development and a functioning airport, they may just build that bridge over the suir they've talked about for years to complete the ring road on the eastern side of the city and it would then be doable.

This is the Waterford City forum. Perhaps you are lost and are looking for the Dublin or Wicklow fora. Waterford Airport is the South East's airport. This isn't a thread about Dublin people driving to Waterford airport.

Regards...jmcc

Nah. Just a bit of geographically challenged edgelordism. :) This investment seems to have upset a lot of people and they are coming up with all sorts of reasons why it is not a good thing. An airport closer to Dublin is not exactly the best of them.

Regards...jmcc

Remember Paudie Coffey talking about this kind of thing once when working with the south east regional assembly. Everything is fine until something comes up that is development for Waterford city. Soon as it does the reasons it should not happen and the blocking tactics start from surrounding counties. I know in the airports case other local authorises are putting money in. But the post above just highlights what Paudie Coffey was talking about. It is a complete, you have something we don’t have so lets do all we can to hold you back attitude. They can’t even see that the government is using this to deny the southeast it's far share. Like the opportunity for a full actual university in the south east was there for the taking and all the benefits that would have come from it for everybody. But Howlin and Hogan just stuck to the same old worn out script leaving the south east lagging behind again.

Are we also forgetting that the current Waterford airport handled 144k passengers in 2008 with turbo prop aircraft servicing Luton, Birmingham, Manchester, Lorient and the BAE146 for Malaga, Faro and Bordeaux.

144k passengers is fairly successfully for a limited runway.

A larger runway with flights to Spain, Portugal etc then a summer service would be very successful and winter your standing London and EU destinations.

That and we can also target tourists in Waterford and the South East region

Look at the demographics and a map. It isn't simply a case using a population number for counties. Look at the satellite view on Google Maps. Where those populations are concentrated matters. Waterford airport is within a short distance of Waterford City, Dunmore, Tramore and Dungarvan. That's even before the Kilkenny, Tipperary and Wexford hinterland is considered. Galway, as pointed out above, is situated between two major airports (Shannon and Knock). Waterford does not have that kind of competition from two closely located airports. If this investment pays off and new routes are added for Waterford, Cork and Dublin airports may lose business. With the population of the SE expected to increase, Waterford airport makes a lot more sense than simply trying to overload Dublin and Cork.

Regards...jmcc

Think people are hell bent on the cost of flights since Aer Arann days, forgetting that they were turbo prop aircraft which are going to be more expensive.

Even at that it was often possible to get Aer Arann for under €150 return, larger aircraft and a budget airline are there is no reason that flights would be more expensive in Waterford.

Most likely these flights will not be based aircraft and will be a drop in service meaning the airline will have no overheads with Waterford bar a landing fee and passenger charge, so one would expect flights to be similar costings to Dublin.

And so what even if they were more expensive, I generally book Cork airport where flights are sometimes more expensive than Dublin as I find Cork less hassle than Dublin when travelling with a family so why would others not take that approach with Waterford

No it was pretty much like the bus station, those flights to Malaga were great at the time. The only negative I recall was they finished them up a few weeks earlier than planned as the numbers were low towards the end of the season. This was 2008 though when everything started to go t*ts up.

I think expectations that this airport will ever have commercial flights again needs to be reigned in a bit.

As a galwegian I am fairly familiar with the modus operandi of the comer brothers which is to land hoard distressed assets, and in fairness it has obviously worked very well when flipping them after a few years particularly in Germany.

I will give you three examples of how they work.

Corrib great southern hotel Galway bought by them in 2015. It was left to go derilect and after multiple fires and was just raised to the ground this year.

Shannon oaks hotel Galway . Damaged by fire in 2011 and bought by comer's in 2015. Has had multiple planning applications for housing since then.

Of most concern to ye should be the case of Kenly aerodrome uk. Bought in 2005 and left to go derilect with again multiple fires on the property. Currently has planning permission for 32 houses .

I am sure they're other cases

Personally due to it's location near the coast i think you will see an application for housing going being submitted in a few years.