A chara, – Whenever and wherever possible, I enjoy promoting Ireland as a great place to visit. Naturally, my own county of Cork is always mentioned during my concert performances, and, given that Cork Airport is an obvious gateway to the south of Ireland, I thought I should highlight the complaints that I have been hearing recently from tourists who have been here and held strong views regarding Cork Airport.
1. Why are there no flights between Dublin and Cork? Although the road and rail has improved immensely, it is often inconvenient for transfer passengers whose destination is Cork or south Munster. A flight only takes 50 minutes approximately. We went from having about 10 a day, between Ryanair and Aer Arann, to having none at all.
2. During bad weather and particularly this very wet summer, passengers have had to brave the cold and rain while airport chutes linking directly to the terminal lay idle. Tourists are baffled by the excuse that they are too expensive to operate. It is only an electric motor for heaven’s sake! One tourist remarked that the local farmers would back a trailer up to the shed door rather than let the cattle get drowned wet, yet we cannot do the same for the travelling public.
3. Are we ever going to have transatlantic flights at Cork airport? We complain about the drop in tourism numbers, yet Cork has always been the poor relation when it comes to transatlantic travel. Tourists again are baffled by the fact that they have to fly via London, Amsterdam, Paris, Manchester, etc, etc, if they wish to come by air to Cork, usually flying over the airport itself to come back again.
There is no doubt that we are making it very difficult for tourists to get here, and particularly to the beautiful areas of Cork, Kerry, and Waterford. The general view is that our flight service via Cork airport (where facilities and staff were highly praised by all) is far from optimum and the consensus is that we are far too patient with the relevant decision-makers concerned. – Is mise,
FINBAR WRIGHT,
Farran,
Co Cork.