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

Plenty of diversions today. Airport remains closed. Faro flight diverted to Knock 😅

That might well be a first. I've never heard of it happening. Was up near the airport earlier. A ridiculous amount of snow around the place up there.

Article also mentions adding a new pier and new gates to the southern side of the terminal, to facilitate capacity expansion.

5 year time horizons, as mentioned in the article, are worthless. The airport has been 5 years away from long haul hub connectivity for the last 25 years.

It seems like transatlantic routes are the nuclear fusion of Cork Airport - Always three years away, regardless of the year…😶

Globespan were Knock not Cork right? As far as I remember Norweigan were being touted as the first transatlantic carrier to operate from Cork.

Oh jeez, where to even start with that?

The Norwegian operation ended because the airline as a whole was beginning to collapse, simple as. They had overextended themselves with their massive expansion of operations all over Europe, not just their transatlantic operations. It’s worth remembering that the airline had gone from 46 aircraft in 2009 to 166 aircraft by the end of 2019, placing massive orders for both the Boeing 737 MAX8, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A321, all financed by loans. They started flying long haul not just from Oslo, which was their home market, or from Ireland, but also from Germany, France, the UK, and other European countries. Ireland was actually just a small part of their operation That’s what eventually broke the airline once the loan costs started eating into the profits, with Norwegian operating at a loss from 2017 onwards despite ever increasing revenue.

This wasn’t helped by the grounding of the 737 MAX8 following crashes in Kenya and Indonesia, which robbed Norwegian of its workhorse for the Irish transatlantic operation and a lot of its other long range narrow-body operations. Norwegian tried to keep the operation going with regular 737-800s, but that just wasn’t going to work out as while the -800 could operate transatlantic from Cork, it suffered massive payload penalties compared to the MAX8, which was able to operate out of Cork with minimal restrictions. Eventually, with the debt situation escalating and the MAX8 not likely to fly again anytime soon, Norwegian pulled the plug first on its CEO and then on its Irish transatlantic operations in 2019. One year later, in 2020, they were down from 166 aircraft to just 7. They’re back up to around 87 aircraft now and are raking in the cash, but have given up on long haul.

As for Cork not being able to handle long-haul aircraft, including the new A321LR or XLR, I just don’t buy that. Will it suffer payload restrictions? Yes, but that’s not exactly unusual, as most modern aircraft cannot actually take off with both a full load of passengers/cargo and a full load of fuel. That exceeds their Maximum Take-Off Weight by a considerable margin. Given how little business Cork seems to be doing with underfloor cargo, we should expect even transatlantic flights to be quite a bit below their MTOW, given that any aircraft will “only” have to carry passengers and luggage. The bigger question is how a Cork flight would fit into a prospective airline’s business plan, which is the real wild card here. The only airlines I can see as prospective candidates for Cork would have to have a strong presence on the US East Coast and have the A321neo or A321LR either on order or in their fleet, whilst also not being tied into an alliance with Aer Lingus. That really only leaves Delta and JetBlue. Yes, the latter has a codeshare agreement with EI, but that’s still way less restrictive than being members of the same alliance.

Not a huge fan of using Cork to subsidise long haul routes for Shannon. The M20 will significantly increase competition between the airports and using Cork's pax to promote a rivals long haul could threaten short haul (particularly hub) viability. Keep in mind that this isn't just Transatlantic, for example, a post M20 daily Emirates flight at Shannon would be a major threat to the beleaguered Cork Amsterdam service.

I would rather the airport fulfil its remit and get the best possible deal for the region it's supporting. That means either having a realistic strategy for long haul that includes a business case for extending the runway or accepting the limitations of the current infrastructure and refocus the apparently considerable long haul route negotiation efforts to European hubs, including Dublin, for connections. People driving from Cork to Shannon instead of transferring at London, Amsterdam or potentially Dublin is bad for the airport.

There’s no hope of transatlantic with that runway. Extending it by 500m would open up a world of possibilities and would be worth the massive investment required

On a slightly related point, the airport also has other shortcomings which act as a little "push" to send passengers to Dublin.

For instance local connectivity. I'd love if they spent some time lobbying for good transport integration to/from the airport. You can't make 0600 flights using public transport, most people can't get home from late flights using public transport. It's a small thing but it counts. The bus link (their only public transport link) has a 30 minute frequency which is NOT proposed to be upgraded for Bus Connects. Yes I know most of us drive and taxi's are usually available, but a lot of the most price-conscious passengers are hopping on buses to Dublin Airport. Cork Airport is basically putting a 20-40 euro tax on these passengers, which, with a bit of lobbying could be massively subsidised by the local bus network.

Further afield, there's CityLink buses going from Galway and Limerick to Cork Airport, but again they're very limited. There's no link in from Waterford or Kerry, which are often Cork Airport users.

It's not like this will make or break the airport, but it's just another "push" factor to Dublin airport: for that 0600 flight (the connector to London or Schiphol) you can get to Dublin Airport from Cork City centre for around the same price as it costs to get to Cork Airport. That's just stupid. For people with less disposable income and more time, they're uncompetitive. And nobody even mentions it.

If there was regular transatlantic services, they wouldn't be long building a pre clearance facility. And once it's there, it would be another carrot to wave in front of an airline that might be interested in Cork.

Whatever about the debate about the runway length, if a flight to New York can operate, it will do well.

The place needs more all year round European non sun destinations more than anything. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be exploring routes to the East Coast of America, or anywhere else.

Is there a bit of too much projection from a certain number of posters here about preferred new direct routes from ORK? They keep going on about or almost mocking the abundance of sun routes but if that is where and what the demand consistently is for, then the airlines are going to facilitate that. They don't launch routes or add frequencies to places with the intention of them failing. They obviously have research that says the sun routes are where the masses of the ORK catchment area want to go above anywhere else such as Doha or Philadelphia or Abu Dhabi.

So criticising the existing or yet to commence airlines for not flying to where you want to go and scoffing or groaning at additional frequencies to Malaga or Lanzarote etc is kind of pointless if their market research shows there is less demand or profit for your wish list routes.

I'm not saying it's wrong to have a wish list or such routes should never happen if there is actual demand and viability,just that it's wrong to condemn the airlines for not flying there just because you and a few others that like your posts want to fly there and hence it should therefore be viable. That's a very flawed assumption.

A US preclearance facility would almost never be needed / built at Cork. I think there are just over a dozen pre-clearance facilities (majority in Canada) and Ireland already has 2. It's not something the Dept of Homeland Security just seem to go about building willy-nilly.

As there's already an existing agreement between both countries, I would imagine there would be a lot of lobbying for one in Cork. Probably only if a route or two established itself over a long period of time.

Either way, I doubt it would be a deal breaker for most people who would be happy to travel out of Cork to New York or Boston.