Cork Airport is the second largest airport in Ireland and it has been closed due to a runway reconstruction. Today the facility has opened once again to passengers.
It is great that the airport has delivered such a large infrastructure project on time. Doing it now also positions the airport well for the restart of flying, especially well in advance of the summer 2022 schedule.
Runway Reconstruction
Located in the far south of Ireland, the airport saw 2,585,466 passengers in 2019. While not a particularly high number, it is still more than Shannon Airport’s 1,710,000 the same year. The two airports are actually only 140km from each other, or about 2 hours drive.
Cork Airport elected to do a 10 week programme of runway reconstruction by closing the airport. This was thought to be more efficient and less disruptive compared to the alternative, which was 10 months of night time closures with work done then.
Services
Day one sees an Aer Lingus plane position in from Dublin to then operate the Cork to London Heathrow and return service. That will be the only service of the day from Cork Airport. People waiting for the new SWISS service to Geneva have to wait until next month.
Tomorrow, KLM return with their Amsterdam service (moving to twice daily next week), Aer Lingus go twice daily to Heathrow and Ryanair return with services to London Stansted and Gdansk. Ryanair will be returning two aircraft to base them at Cork and Vueling will also serve the region.
Overall Thoughts
It’s great to see the runway reconstruction at Cork has gone according to plan and is completed on time. Doing it during a quiet period of the year is also a very good move and puts the airport on a commercial footing for next year.
The next big runway news in Ireland will be the opening of the parallel runway at Dublin Airport, increasing capacity at the facility and easing congestion. This is expected to occur in 2022.
Have you ever used Cork Airport before? What do you think of their runway reconstruction? If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image via Cork Airport’s Twitter.
