Cork Airport ‘not attractive enough to add more routes’

Cork Airport is not attractive enough as a commercial proposition for Ryanair to operate more routes from it, according to the airline.

Ryanair has announced it will only operate seven routes from Cork in the winter schedule as the airline believes that it costs too much to fly passengers in to and out of Cork.

The routes will make up Ryanair’s winter schedule from Cork are London Stansted, London Gatwick, Liverpool, Lanzarote, Wroclaw, Gdansk and Vilnius.

The new chief marketing officer of Ryanair, Kenny Jacobs, said the demand for the flights was there but the commercial proposition was not attractive enough for the airline to move aircraft off other routes and base them in Cork.

“We have operational issues, there are better routes that we can put our planes on. The amount of money we pay to fly a passenger in Cork, we have to weigh that up against Shannon and other European locations, we don’t have endless aircraft.”

Head of communications at Cork Airport, Kevin Cullinane said that they were bringing in initiatives to attract new routes.

“Cork Airport is in regular dialogue with all its customers, including Ryanair.

“We recently introduced a new five-year incentive scheme to attract new routes as well as introducing a new capacity incentive scheme.”

Mr Jacobs who is originally from Montenotte, said that he would love to announce extra flights out of Cork in addition to the seven routes that they have unveiled but for that to happen there has to be a better commercial proposition for the airline.

“We would like to have more flights out of Cork. When the Government dropped the airport tax we said we would add an extra 1m passengers.

“If we had a better commercial deal in Cork we would put more flights on. We have a good relationship with the airport but we need a better commercial deal.”

The demand for more routes out of Cork exists in particular demand for business flights linking into Dublin to take advantage of new transatlantic routes.

Mr Jacobs said that the development of the motorway system meant that more people would now drive but he didn’t rule it out completely.

“We have done it and we could do it again but it has to be profitable.”