Congratulations to our friends at Ireland West Airport on their success but I can’t but cast an enviable eye in the direction of Knock where, last week, Ryanair introduced yet another sun destination from the facility. The new, all-year, Thursday flight to Malaga is expected to attract 13,000 extra customers this year alone. It began on Thursday last and will be augmented with a Sunday flight in the summer months.
There are also weekly flights out of Knock to Alicante, Faro, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Tenerife and management is confident of building on the 100,000 passengers who flew to Spain and Portugal from Ireland West Knock Airport last year. Of course, there are also many other scheduled flights from Knock to various destinations in Britain.
That could be us if we only had a runway at Killowen capable of taking larger jet aircraft. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem much chance of that happening anytime soon. But, they say the darkest hour is just before dawn so let us hope that a new, prosperous era for Waterford Regional Airport is not too far away.