Nostaligia: Cork Airport is 62 years old and is still flying

CORK Airport marked its 62nd birthday this week with a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, a thoroughly modern way to mark a milestone.

“Today (Monday, October 16), we celebrate 62 years of connecting Cork to the world.

“Since October 16, 1961, over 70 million people have chosen to fly to and from @corkairport. Here’s to many more years of adventures, connections and memories.”

In that first two and a half months, 10,527 people flew in or out to Cork Airport, passengers going to Dublin, London, Paris and Bristol.

According to Cork Airport communications manager Barry Holland, that’s around the same amount of passengers the transport hub would deal with on a busy Friday or Sunday now.

One of the early staples of the airport’s business was pilgrimages to destinations such as Lourdes.

Nowadays the airport flies to destinations all over Europe so citizens of the southwest can enjoy weekends away in capitals and other tourist hotspots in UK and on the continent.

The airport was opened by then Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, the pioneering politician who had established Aer Lingus in 1936, and Cork’s Lord Mayor, Anthony Barry.

As reported by PP O’Reilly on Radio Éireann (the national broadcaster wouldn’t include a television service until New Year’s Eve that same year), Cllr Barry described the establishment of Cork Airport on October 16, 1961, as ‘psychologically and chronologically correct’.

“Cork is now entering a great period of expansion and the airport is a vital factor,” he said.

“Industry, commerce and tourism will rapidly expand, we have at last shaken off the easygoing 19th century.

“The airport provides a challenge and an opportunity, we are ready.”

Those first few months were a far cry from the hectic schedule of today.

There would be five flights on Monday, three on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The airport was closed on Sunday, a day of rest. These days, the airport operates on a 24/7 basis with between 30 and 40 flights a day.

The airport’s first general manager was Vincent Fanning, followed by Paddy O’Grady, Gerry Houlihan, Barry Roche, Joe O’Connor, Pat Keohane and, these days, Niall McCarthy is the managing director of the airport with just over 250 full-time staff at present.

“That’s with a bigger operation,” said Barry Holland. “Back then it was much smaller, a much tighter ship.”

There have been many significant milestones since the journey began for the airport back in 1961— its first jumbo jet landed in 1989 after a 1,000-foot extension to the runway, and its new terminal opened in August 2006, around the time the airport was accommodating 3m passengers a year.

Last year it was around 2.6m but they hope to be soon back to the mid-noughties levels.

The airport also hosted many famous passengers — Charlie Chaplin and Fred Astaire were heroes of their eras even if they didn’t have TikTok channels.

The late Queen of England, Elizabeth II, was a Very Important Passenger when she visited Cork in 2011.

Other famous passengers included Beatles legend Paul McCartney, the Bee Gees and poet and scholar, Robert Graves.