Aer Lingus to TOU and TFS

[akerosid]

Aer Lingus will be starting services to Toulouse and Tenerife (I'm assuming Reina Sophia, rather than Los Rodeos?), from October. No frequencies/types known as yet, but I think it would be bad manners to operate a 737 to TOU.

Ironically, SEA is included in the list of potential US destinations (and will most likely be served by 332s!!) once this whole bilateral issue is sorted out, so EI could be one of very few airlines serving both TOU and SEA. Interesting to see how many will take advantage of that convenient connection!

[positive]

Tenerife is weekly on saturdays and Toulouse is 3 times a week tues/ thurs and saturday.Aer Lingus will need to move soon if its proposed 2 new routes to the USA are to start this winter!any news yet on the talks?

[akerosid]

It is most unlikely that the EU/US talks on bilaterals will have made any real progress by then, so I don't know how EI are going to manage this. I thought the Irish government might try for a cosy deal, but with SIPTU/ICTU trying to include the stopover and bilateral rights in their "holistic" approach to aviation issues (including the break-up of Aer Rianta etc), there might be difficulties there.

I thought EI might be able to do a deal by leaning towards Boeing in its imminent fleet selection, but on the other hand, how will that get them over the 50/50 rule; they won't want to fly to new cities if they're still lumbered with that.

The EU is taking a slow route, expecting to reach US bilateral agreement by 2006, so perhaps if US carriers like CO/DL knew this and decided that the best way to move was to try and provoke change by threatening a pull-out from SNN, it might encourage some focusing of attention on this issue. That's a very long shot and in all honesty, unlikely.