Originally Posted by
Skipness One Foxtrot
Aer Lingus leaving AGAIN? How many times is that now? Was pleased they came back in 2008 with the A320 after leaving when the 146s were retired. I've never been on a quiet DUB-LGW, and unlike long haul passengers who will make the journey to LHR, this will surely cost traffic and market share on their core Dublin-London offering. Or has the move of NOC to LHR meant they no longer feel it necessary?
I read somewhere that a major factor in EI deciding to pull its DUB-LGW route was the post pandemic collapse in business travellers using the route pre pandemic. These are the people who generally wouldn't fly FR. Without those business travellers, EI is left with only those who wouldn't mind flying FR if the price is more attractive. Given that FR's costs are significantly lower than EI's and that FR serves LGW-DUB up to eight times daily all-year round as opposed to EI five times daily in winter and only four times daily in summer mainly at very similar times to FR, with transatlantic connections at DUB generally not working well in terms of extended layover at DUB compared with FI via KEF, especially when looking at it both ways, this is an uphill struggle that EI couldn't win. Another factor is the arbitrary 32 million p.a.pax cap at DUB, which I vaguely recall was a concession DUB had negotiated in return for getting permission from the ROI government to build a second runway many years ago. This means that even though DUB has twice LGW's runway capacity, it effectively handles 15 million fewer pax p.a. than LGW at its pre pandemic peak! Given this artificial constraint in addition to the other factors I mentioned, I'm not at all surprised EI has pulled the route. In this connection as well re loss of transfer traffic between EI and BA at LGW, given that the majority of those were probably transferring at LGW to / from places like MCO and BGI, EI can easily redirect thus traffic via MAN as both MCO and BGI are served by EI's UK subsidiary from there, with this being even more advantageous than routing them onto BA via LGW as EI will be able to keep all the revenue - incl. the really profitable long-haul portion of the entire itinerary instead of "gifting" this to BA while keeping only the loss-making short-haul portion - in-house.
The interesting question -as already mentioned before- is: What will happen to EI's LGW slots?
Getting up to five daily, commonly timed slot pairs at popular times when most passengers actually want to fly at LGW these days is an absolute rarity. Therefore, I do believe these slots have great value. So far, EI appears to be tight-lipped re what they're planning to do with those slots - giving / selling them to BA or another IAG airline with a presence at LGW like VY for ecample, selling them to a non-IAG airline like FR for example or returning them to the LGW slot pool for reallocation by ACL. Also, as each of the up to five daily LGW slot pairs EI currently uses has a 40 min turnaround between each arrival and departure, these slots will be best suited to a short-haul operator using aircraft based at the other end of the route (not at LGW) if all slots are to be used on their entirety - i.e., as a package to be used by one operator (the only option if EI wants to realise the value of these slots by selling them at a profit) rather than being disaggregated and randomly redistributed among different operators. In my opinion, this will make them awkward for BA's LGW EF short-haul subsidiary as they would need to overnight an aircraft at the other end of the route to make best use of them, something they firmly ruled out doing as this was identfied as a major source of the losses BA has historically incurred on short-haul at LGW. While this still doesn't rule out BA mainline potentially doing a DUB-LGW feeder in a W pattern as they currently do on GLA-LGW, like GLA-LGW, this would probably be a single daily flight only.
The following scenarios are the most likely in my opinion re future usage of EI's LGW slots:
1 Selling them to FR. As FR already effectively duplicates most of EI's current timings on LGW-DUB and tgey already run a high-frequency service on this route with up to twice EI's frequency, they'd probably only at another sngle daily frequency to their current LGW-DUB schedule, making it up to nine per day (instead of up to eight), with the remaining three to four daily slot pairs being used to boost frequencies on LGW-ORK and LGW-SNN from the current single daily round-trip to double or triple daily and perhaps reintroducing LGW-NOC (probably as a summer seasonal service, with this slot pair being used to fly in and back out of LGW from one of FR's numerous Continental bases in a W pattern in winter).
2. Selling them to a short-haul member / affiliate of one of the three big global airline alliances, such as Skyteam for example, either FSC or LCC.
2 1. If FSC, this could be a once in a life time opportunity for an airline like KL or AF to tap the LGW catchment area for connecting traffic transferring at their AMS or CDG hub to / from their globe-spanning long-haul route network, neatly complementing their long- and well-established presence in the LHR catchment area, where - because of even greater runway capacity constraints than at LGW - short of LHR actually being able to build a third runway - it will be impossible for them to further increase flight frequencies to / from their own global hub airports. Either KL or AF would be a great addition for LGW in my opinion as it would open up a multitude of new global, one-stop connections for LGW, which unlike those already provided from LGW by the likes of EK, QR and (from 22 June) SQ will not only offer additional eastward-facing connections but westward-facing ones as well. Personally, I would favour KL over AF as AMS despite its recent issues is a more user-friendly hub than CDG although I'm conscious that adding up to five new daily LGW-AMS feeder flights will probably be more difficult to achieve than for AF to add this many flights at CDG because of previous Dutch government policy to cap flights at AMS despite tgis being a six-runway facility. M
2 2. If LCC, staying with the example of the Skyteam alliance, the French arm of HV, most likely on the shape of an up to five times daily ORY-LGW service usibg ORY-based aircraft as there will be sufficient capacity for HV to do so at the ORY end as well given AF's decision to discontinue its French domestic shuttle services to / from ORY for very similar reasons as those stated by EI for discontinuing LGW-DUB (a collapse in business traffic) and to transfer its ORY slots to HV. If HV were to use AF's ORY slots and EI's LGW slots to launch LGW-ORY, their frequency could be an exact match of EI's current LGW-DUB frequency: five daily from Monday to Friday, two daily on Saturdays and four daily on Sundays, and they could probably continue to use South Terminal's pier 1, making LGW's operational planning easier than if KL or AF decided to take EI's LGW slots themselves as they'd probably pefer to be in the North Terminal.