‘I believe the growth for Cork is transatlantic’

Planes on the tarmac at Cork Airport(Image: Karl Kachmarsky)

Cork Airport is undergoing a major transformation following the investment of over €200 million in an ambitious capital development plan announced late last year. It’s an exciting time for Munster’s favourite airport, which is looking to expand towards five million passengers a year – and now a veteran of Irish aviation is calling for Cork to bring in transatlantic flights to boost passenger numbers further.

Pádraig Ó Céidigh has decades of experience in aviation, having acquired Galway-based airline Aer Arran in 1994 and expanding it into a popular regional carrier. The business was purchased by Stobart Group in the 2010s, with Pádraig leading the spin-off company, Aer Arann Islands, until its sale in 2020.

During his time at the helm of Aer Arran, Pádraig introduced a Cork to Dublin service, which allowed passengers to reach the capital in 30 minutes. The route was axed after Ryanair introduced a competing service between the two cities, which itself was later discontinued in 2011.

Now, Pádraig has called on Cork Airport to introduce transatlantic flights as part of their ambitious expansion plans, revealing that he was once approached by then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and former Minister Seamus Brennan about securing flights between Cork and the United States.

Pádraig travelled to the United States and met representatives from New York’s JFK Airport and Boston’s Logan Airport, who were on board with the idea. Technical assessments were then carried out to confirm whether a Boeing 757 could comfortably take off and land at Cork Airport, and, according to Pádraig, they had no trouble doing so.

The assessments confirmed the route’s feasibility, but as a regional airline, Aer Arran determined that making the jump to transatlantic flights was too risky and ultimately decided against moving forward with the project. However, the Boeing 757 remains a popular choice among many major airlines, and Pádraig has urged Cork Airport management to explore transatlantic flights.

He said: “In relation to Cork Airport and the Cork region, I actually believe you’ve got really good services now around Europe. That’s brilliant. That’s fantastic, so it is – but you’re not going west.

“I believe Cork Airport and the Cork region, economically, socially, tourism and so on, would hugely benefit from a transatlantic flight in and out of Cork,” he told PJ Coogan on Cork’s 96FM.

“You’ve got in the region of 2 million people [flying] transatlantic out of Dublin at the moment, and in Shannon, you have about 330,000 to 350,000 people flying in and out of Shannon Airport transatlantic. Cork has about 3.5 million passengers [compared to about] 2.2 million in Shannon.

“So you’ve got the population in and around there. Shannon has transatlantic and fair play to them, I’m delighted to have it, it’s really important for the west of Ireland. But I think the growth for Cork is transatlantic in and out of America. It would be hugely beneficial to the airport and the region.”

In 2017, Cork Airport launched a direct transatlantic service to Boston operated by Norwegian, a budget airline based out of Scandinavia, but the service was discontinued in 2019. When asked why a new service could succeed where its predecessor failed, Pádraig said that the ‘unprecedented growth’ of Cork Airport means its passenger base may now be large enough to make the service viable.

We know that Cork Airport’s capital development plan will bring in new flights to the region, but it’s too early to say precisely which new routes the airport is eying up – so it remains to be seen if Cork will ever return to transatlantic operations.