Originally Posted by
A320.b744
When IAG made their offer for Aer Lingus, they made a commitment that Aer Lingus slots would be ‘locked’ for a period of five years, meaning the slots had to be used for Aer Lingus services between LHR and Ireland. This was to ensure that Aer Lingus didn’t sell their LHR slots to British Airways, to be used for long haul expansion.
However, according to EI-A330-300 in their post above, BHD was not included in this agreement.
That doesn’t mean that my suspicions aren’t correct though - Aer Lingus could still just be holding onto the slots until BA needs them.
You mention that your sources say that Aer Lingus is performing well on its BHD-LHR route. That may be so, but what is good for Aer Lingus may not be good for IAG as a whole. Aer Lingus’ BHD-LHR flights carry flight numbers for several Star Alliance carriers. Surely this is bad for business for IAG, as Aer Lingus are essentially assisting the likes of Air Canada and United Airlines on services rivalling BA from LHR. It would make a lot more sense to axe Aer Lingus’ LHR service completely, and use the slots for a) 1-2 daily BA services to BHD, and b) 1-2 daily BA long haul services.
From what I recall the agreement protected the Heathrow slots to the other Aer Lingus airports (Dublin, Cork, Shannon) for a number of years, and prevented them being used elsewhere. In respect of the Belfast route though the slots were not restricted to Belfast, but were restricted to the Island of Ireland.
I don't think there would be anything stopping IAG indirectly using the Belfast slots elsewhere by instead using them on Dublin services and reducing equivalent number of BA slots to Dublin and using these BA slots elsewhere.
I think IAG are required to still provide connections to other airlines (e.g. Star Alliance) on favourable terms. I can see the advantages from IAG's point of view though of replacing the Belfast Aer Lingus services to LHR T2 with some BA services to LHR T5, as it makes it just a little bit more inconvenient to connect to Star Alliance services. It also makes it a lot more convenient to connect to other BA services due to the fact that domestic passengers on flights to T5 don't have to go through security at LHR and can go straight to departures with only a boarding pass scan.