Air traffic control temporarily restricted flights in and out of Cork Airport, due to a staff shortage, halting all activity between midnight and 7am yesterday.<\/p>\n
AirNav Ireland, which operates air traffic control (ATC) at the airport, restricted the flow of arriving and departing flights.<\/p>\n
Air traffic was restricted “in order to maintain safe operations”, according to a statement from Cork Airport.<\/p>\n
Operations were curtailed due to a last-minute staff shortage.<\/p>\n
One air traffic controller was out sick on Wednesday morning in Cork, and had given AirNav Ireland reasonable time to find a replacement. With ongoing tensions between ATC staff and management, they could not fill the position, forcing the airport to effectively close to all traffic temporarily.<\/p>\n
Three people out of a total of 280 licensed air traffic controllers across the country quit their jobs on Tuesday, according to a source, representing a significant loss.<\/p>\n
AirNav Ireland apologised to passengers for the inconvenience, saying: “Due to short notice [air traffic control] ATC staff absences on the morning of February 11, AirNav Ireland\u2019s Cork air traffic control operations temporarily restricted ATC services until 7am.<\/p>\n
“AirNav Ireland liaised with airline customers, the Daa Cork Airport and the IAA about the flow restrictions.”<\/p>\n
Many ATC staff are working four to five days overtime per month and fear they will be asked to work more.<\/p>\n
Anger over staff shortages and pensions \u2014 which ATC workers say are insufficient and failing to keep pace with inflation \u2014 is among the factors pushing staff to leave.<\/p>\n
Despite shorter airspace shutdowns in Shannon and Dublin airport in recent weeks, what happened at Cork Airport on Wednesday was \u201ctotally unprecedented\u201d, one source said.<\/p>\n
But Barry Holland, communications manager with Cork Airport said on Wednesday that \u201cdisruption was kept to a minimum this morning\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur hard-working teams ensured that passengers were accommodated and that the flights departed, albeit with delay,\u201d Mr Holland said, with all delayed flights departing Cork later in the morning.<\/p>\n
One arriving flight from Tenerife was diverted to Shannon after 1am.<\/p>\n
Ryanair flights to Manchester and Gran Canaria; an Aer Lingus flight to Malaga; and a KLM flight to Amsterdam, all of which were due to leave before 7am, left later in the morning, Mr Holland said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Air traffic control temporarily restricted flights in and out of Cork Airport, due to a staff shortage, halting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,6949,4257,79,61,60],"class_list":["post-294311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-cork-airport","tag-cork-business","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}