Irish
airline CityJet is set to light up the skies from Cork to City Airport London
with the expansion of that air route. The airline is relatively young (1993),
and is ambitiously increasing its aerial footprint. The airline already has a
network of 50 short haul routes including destinations in Britain and
Continental Europe, which is the biggest of any airport route outside Dublin. The
flight is scheduled to operate thrice a day from Monday to Friday. Apart from
that, according to the plan, there is going to be one return flight on
Saturdays and two on Sundays. In totality, there are going to be 18 flights a
week between Cork and London. Everything is set to be operational from October
this year.
Currently, CityJet
is a company of approximately 500 employees with services provided to the
airports in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Avignon, Brive, Dublin, London, Nantes, Paris,
Florence, Rotterdam and Toulon. It operates
an all-jet fleet of 95-seater BA146’s, however, it will re-fleet soon with a longer
range 93-110 seat aircraft.
Growth prospects
The Executive Chairman CityJet, Pat
Byrne was of the view that there is a lot of potential in the routes outside
Cork. He also stated that it had become quite obvious that both, business and
leisure passengers wanted a “hasslefree” access to London; hence this route
would prove to be fruitful. Besides, he suggested that City Airport is the
central location with easy access to tourist attractions, financial districts
and West End. According to Cork Airport
Managing Director Niall MacCarthy, over
800,000 passengers already fly to London in one year through the existing
flight service, making London the most popular destination for passengers. With the announcement of the new route, this
number is likely to increase further. What makes the management so confident
about the success of this route is the historical data of Dublin-London City,
which grew by 50% year on year. Also,
€35 one way tickets of the new route have already been sold yesterday. Good news for the passengers is that the
airline does not only provide free eatables and drinks to its customers onboard
but also gives a 23kg free check-in baggage permit.
Trickledown
Effects
This is definitely
going to affect other industries, like hotel management, car hiring etc. The Chair of Cork branch of the Irish Hotel
Federation was of the view that this flight service will definitely boost the numbers
of visitors from the largest tourism market of Ireland. Similarly,
transportation facilities provided by car hiring companies will benefit, as
more people will be willing to take services like minicab, airport transfers,
executive car hire etc.
It would not only increase the competition on london routes but will also help in opening up destinations including Paris (orly, Antwerp, Nantes, Avigno, Florence and Toulon to outbound passenger. However, the challenge is to make sure that not a single chance is missed to increase the number of passengers and promote cork globally as a business travel as well as a holiday destination.
