Shannon Airport - SNN



This airport will be familiar with many people on this forum as the airport used on LCY-SNN-JFK services using the all Club World Airbus 318 "baby-bus" aircraft. This is actually an interesting airport, but it will never win prizes for looking good, it's a bit of a 1970s dinosaur compared to the glitz of ORK or DUB T2. The current airport largely owes itself to 1947, but the site was originally chosen for the Foynes seaplane airport, on the other side of the Shannon Estuary. BA - in its predecessor companies BOAC and Imperial Airways - had a big role in shaping Shannon's history. This is well documented on the web (including the airport's website, see below), I've included some snippets below, and makes fascinating reading.



The main departure check-in area is dominated by a huge sculpture of a rugby lineout, called The Day That Changed Ireland:



This commemorates a particular moment in the 1997 Ireland v England game in Croke Park, which was hugely symbolic step in the Irish peace process.

BA's CWLCY services
BA1 and BA3 visit Shannon Mondays through to Fridays, for refuelling and in the case of BA1, USA pre-clearance. For BA1, passengers get to walk around one section of SNN, the gates are arranged so that passengers from LCY are outside preclearance but then pass through the CBP operated hall and back to the same departure gate, cleared for entry into the USA. A ground agent walks the first passenger through the system, with rest following, starting with a security check (shoes off, but nothing else needs to come out of the bag) and then on to the CBP agents or Global Entry machines. The process should take under 10 minutes in normal circumstances, there is a dedicated seating area by the gate and in due course passengers are summoned back on board to continue their trip to JFK. There is no stop on the return leg, and for BA3 passengers remain on board during refuelling. It isn't possible to buy a ticket for just the LCY-SNN leg, or, for that matter, to join the service at SNN. I guess it is possible to buy a ticket to JFK and then offload yourself in Shannon, but there are probably more cost effective ways to get to SNN, as illustrated below. This video, of Richard Quest visiting Shannon on British Airways in his CNN documentary of the NYLON route, may bring back happy memories. It also provides some insight to Shannon's history.
(There are quite a lot of Youtube videos about Shannon, many relating to BA1, also the A380 visit, but there are some of Concorde landing there).

Services to and from LHR:

There are normally 3 flights a day between LHR T2 and SNN on Aer Lingus mainline. These are available as BA codeshares and can be booked via BA.com and other channels. The aircraft used in an Airbus A320.

Back to back potential:
The potential for a back to back is good, but there are some caveats. The LHR-SNN flight appear to be all run back to back, but with the aircraft based in SNN. So the last flight out of London stays overnight in SNN, the other two flights can be done back to back on the same day. I did time a potential back to back, and it took 14 minutes 30 seconds! The reason it took so long was that when I got to security there were 20 people in the queue from a church group, 2 operating channels, and some of them were fairly slow in getting jackets off and what not. Still it would have made the back to back perfectly viable since the return flight was still some time off being ready to board. Also I didn't try to speed it up, e.g. by asking to jump the queue. There is also a transfer route (with a BA sign by it, it's used during the BA1 shuffle) which would have avoided security altogether and made a back to back pretty much foolproof, but it was boarded off at the time I went through on a bank holiday (when BA1 wasn't operating).


Back to back process and timings


I timed a potential back to back at 14 minutes 30 seconds, with a bit of a queue in security. The process involved: airbridge off aircraft - short corridor to the exit stairwell, down to ground level, passport check (barely a glance), baggage reclaim, landside. Then turn right towards the centre of the airport, you'll see the rugby players, up the escalators and straight in front is security. Boarding pass check, security itself, duty free shop and then you are in the hall photographed below. Without the group in security this would have well under 10 minutes, possibly under 5 minutes.



Overnight potential:
As with Cork it's always worth considering staying overnight rather than going back to back, particularly if you have checked luggage. However not that the relatively low number of flights means that it's not necessarily as much a backup as Cork or certainly Dublin. The other downside that I can point to is that there really isn't much to look at or do in Shannon or a 10 mile radius, apart perhaps from a bit of plane-spotting, unlike Cork or Dublin which have large city on the doorstep. Nevertheless, if new to non-London ("ex-EU") fares, then staying the night may be a more gentle introduction to the game.


(This photo shows both the route to the lounge, and at the back of the photo, the entrance to US Preclearance. You can just make out the blue BA sign for BA1 passengers).

Lounge access for BAEC members:
BAEC Silver and above can use the Aer Lingus lounge in Shannon. It's called the The Rineanna Suite, named after the township that served the Foynes seaplane service. Full details in the Aer Lingus forum, well I'm putting the photos here since there aren't many in their forum yet! It strikes me as being the biggest (relative to the number of passengers), most comfortable lounge in Ireland, though it still isn't worth a long visit! There isn't a lounge after US preclearance, so it presumably gets bypassed by most potential users, keen to get the preclearance over with. It's also open to Priority Pass cardholders. It's clearly signposted from the main departure hall, by the corridor leading to gate 7 - and it is permanently staffed.







Hotel options:
There is one obvious hotel, the Park Inn by Radisson, which is right in front of the airport, and impossible to miss, just over the short term car park, following an extended zebra crossing style path. The rates are quite reasonable, I have stayed there 3 times in recent years, and whilst it's still ultimately an airport hotel, it's quite quiet, cosy, recently refitted and does a good breakfast. It is nevertheless an older hotel. There are 2 hotels in the vicinity of Shannon Town, the Oakwood Arms and Shannon Court hotel. BA, on a recent irrop to the LCY-JFK service, put stranded Flyertalk passengers at the rather upscale Dromoland Castle, 6 miles north.


Public transport options:
This is quite good. There is a public bus service from the front door of SNN airport to Shannon town centre, which runs every hour. €2 each way. The service runs on to Limerick in one direction, Ennis in the other. Other operators also have service to both Limerick and Ennis, so the service frequency is good enough to turn up on spec. There are also quite a range of towns connected by regular long distance coach services there, notably Cork and Galway.


What to see in Shannon
A bit awkward this one. Shannon is a New Town built to house the people working at the airport and the businesses it was expected to pull in. It's difficult to say it's has much to offer the visiting tourist, any more than (e.g.) Crawley. Limerick, a bustling riverside city, is 15 miles away up the River Shannon. It's the third largest city in the Republic, home to about 100,000 souls, Munster Rugby and several important educational establishments, students making up nearly a quarter of the city. Galway is also accessible by public transport and is a more popular tourist resort. More relevant to some in this forum is the Foynes Flying Boat and Maritime Museum. I've not been but I have read good reports about it. Shannon owes its existence to the seaplane and airstrip built at near by Rineanna, in the 1930s, when the thinking at that stage was that air travel across the Atlantic would involve seaplanes going to Newfoundland (Botwood) and then on to New York. The museum website is http://www.flyingboatmuseum.com/. This museum is on the other side of the Shannon Estuary, you need to go into Limerick and out again to get there, not too difficult on public transport.

Airport services:
ATM machines, WH Smith, several food and drink options both landside and airside. The airport has a free wifi service throughout.


Other services from SNN
Shannon is different from Cork in one very notable respect: it has a number of direct flights to North America, complete with pre-clearance. Furthermore one of the routes, SNN-PHL, is with American, so valid for TP and Avios, and also has BA codeshares on them (for slightly higher Avios earning). It doesn't have the latest cabin refit, however. These are some of the other routes from SNN, I'm excluding BA's JFK service since you can't start your trip in SNN.

SNN-PHL - AA with BA codeshares, also IB and AY codeshares.
SNN-BOS - Aer Lingus using ASL Air Contractors - see below
SNN-JFK - Aer Lingus using ASL Air Contractors - see below
SNN-EDI and SNN-BHX - Aer Lingus Regional / Stobart (summer only)
SNN-AGP, FAO, ACE - summer service by Aer Lingus mainline.

The ASL services use rather elderly 757, the business class certainly isn't flat bed, it's probably more akin to WTP. Now it's can be cheap for business class but you kind of get what you pay for. On the other hand it is potentially useful for Avios redemptions, in that the number of Avios needed is relatively small, and the surcharges are low, potentially around £70 plus 25k Avios in economy, 70K in Business, both return, which is a lot lower than doing it on BA or AA. It's the same from Dublin too, but there you'll get proper Aer Lingus equipment and it's much more modern. Currently you can only book these flights on the telephone, neither availability checking nor booking can be done online.

The European and UK Aer Lingus flights are not currently showing as codeshares, but will earn a few Avios if booked with Aer Lingus.

Shannon Airport Aviation Gallery
This may be of interest to passengers using BA1 as well as the Aer Lingus flights. It's just a bit back from the seating area before USA Pre Clearance. HBO passengers can go straight through to Pre Clearance, those with bags wait until the announcement that bags have been digitally loaded into the CBP officers' systems. If you go a very short distance away from the CBP entrance towards gate 7 you will come across the Gallery. More details in a post below, but worth a flying visit!

Miscellaneous

• The weather in Shannon in winter is renown for being quite grim. Lots of wind and rain. Summer there's also lots of wind, and slightly less rain.
• Both Air France and British Airways made frequent use of Shannon Airport for Concorde training.
• The world's first airport duty free shop was opened in Shannon in 1947. And it's still trading! Has a rugby section.
• Shannon holds an important milestone in BA's history. In July 1946 BOAC started a regular service from LHR-SNN-YQX (Gander)-LGA (LaGuardia), using a fleet of 5 Lockheed Constellations. These took 40 passengers, who paid £168 for the return journey (now about £4900 adjusted for inflation) and which took 19 hours westbound. Until the mid 1960s, Shannon and/or Gander were necessary refuelling locations for trans Atlantic services, so to some extent the LCY service upholds the tradition. Shannon is also remains the communication home of Shanwick, the ATC centres for the Eastern Approaches shared between the UK and Ireland.
  

Website links:
Airport website: http://www.shannonairport.ie/gns/Passengers/Home.aspx