FlyingInIreland

I was down in Waterford yesterday and they have very little to complain about this summer.

A number of the summer services have already kicked off with flights to Amsterdam, Faro, Malaga & Galway. Services to Bordeaux and Lorient start in the next 2 to 3 weks. Aer Arann have also added a third Luton rotation on most days of the week.

Its abit of a squeese on Sundays where 2 ATR & 2 146 aircraft operate close together. Plans for 4 ICAO stands for nose in parking and pushback are completed, with the stands lines going down shortly.

Getting Avgas is becoming abit of a pain in the arse so you must preplan and get it before the scheduled flights land, otherwise your waiting.

Dx

Festina lente!

Waterford celebrates 25 years of international flights today. A certain low fares airline started its first flight from Waterford to Gatwick on 8th July 1985.

Dx

Yes indeed, a very different low cost airline than it is now and with a Bandeirante at that. Since then the contrast could not be greater between airline and airport. The airline I suppose could not have been more successful, as for the airport it seems to have struggled at times during the past 25 years.
Waterford is an airport of considerable potential but has been treated as the cinderella of regional airports starved of the indirect subsidy of the PSO routes.
From what I hear the loads on the existing routes to Luton, Manchester, Birmingham and Lorient have held up well during the current downturn and have some of the best loads on the Aer Arann system but these routes can hardly be enough to run the place without significant government subvention. The viability of sun holiday routes was proved a few years ago with impressive loads on routes to Faro, Malaga etc. where are they now? Amsterdam also did well shared with Galway. Yes I know what happened around the AOC issue, but why was a replacement operator not found?
I see the current management have some impressive development plans ( see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyPgb7itwys ) but it will require significant investment at a time when such money is hard to find. The next year or so will tell a lot.