How Cork's transatlantic flights were finally secured after long-running battle

Eoin English looks at why it was such a struggle to convince some of the stakeholders that transatlantic flights to and from Cork would be a good deal all round.

IT LOOKED for a long time as if Cork Airport’s first direct transatlantic flights would never take off - with the journey from Norwegian’s licence application in 2014 to yesterday’s historic confirmation of a start date hitting several patches of severe turbulence along the way.

But thanks to an intensive lobbying campaign which reached all the way to the Oval Office, Norwegian Air International (NAI), a subsidiary of low-fares giant, Norwegian, finally announced details yesterday of its three-flights-a-week service from Cork Airport to TF Green Airport, in New England, about 112km south of Boston - the airport’s first ever direct scheduled service to the US.