Airline abandons plan for early Heathrow flight to Cork
Yesterday, the airline admitted that the proposed 6.40am flight from Heathrow to Cork in 2008 will not go ahead.
The route, confirmed by the airline last Friday, would only have been available if it went ahead and axed the 7.30am departure from Cork.
This alternative angered the city’s business community, who said it would have cut people in the south of Ireland off from international business activity.
Cork Chamber chief executive Conor Healy said yesterday that the return of the 7.30am flight was good news.
“We very much welcome that there will be no change to the early morning or late night flights as both are key connections particularly for business travellers,” he said.
On Wednesday night the company changed its mind regarding plans to move the lucrative 7.30am flight from Cork to Belfast. It did so as it faced a potential backlash from business leaders who rallied to keep the flight at Cork.
For logistical reasons it could not have introduced a 6.40am flight from Heathrow and kept the existing departure times in Cork.
Hours before making its definitive announcement on Wednesday night, a company statement accepted adjustments were to be made to its Heathrow slots.
At the time it could not guarantee continuing the 7.30am flight until its schedule was finalised later this week.
Cork Airport also confirmed its business-friendly flight times were threatened by moves to make the Belfast service more attractive.
However, after news broke about its change of heart, the airline blamed the website schedules on a technical glitch and said the Cork flights were never under threat.
Speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday Aer Lingus business development manager Enda Corneille said the confusion arose because of “tidying up on various routes”.
Afterwards, the Aer Lingus press office said the standard practice was for the 2007 schedule to be automatically transferred to the website for next year. This did not happen in the case of Cork Heathrow’s service.
The airline’s internal flight management system, Astral, also only allocated an 8.45am flight from Cork for 2008.
This was changed early yesterday morning with original times restored.
However, these flights appeared with a restrictive price of between €143 and €153 one-way (for the early morning and late night slots after April 2008).
The same flights in October of this year cost €29.
The press office said this happened in error and was not to make the flights prohibitive. A spokeswoman said it will be corrected.
It also said it would increase the capacity on its morning time flights from Cork by allocating a larger plane to the route.
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