Time for a local answer to crisis? - Body blows for Cork airport

THE confirmation that Cork airport is to lose its last freight service is another body blow for the struggling facility.

That setback was exacerbated when Agriculture Minister and airport area representative Simon Coveney said a deal to resolve the airport’s debt crisis is not being contemplated.

This sorry saga, rooted in a promise broken by a previous, Fianna Fáil-led government, has hamstrung the airport and made it almost commercially impossible for it to sustain services, much less expand. At this stage, the impasse suggests a long, slow and painful decline, one that seems as if it might be ever more difficult to reverse.