Effect on DUB of Irish/US bilateral changes?
I was just wondering about the effect of a change in the Irish/US bilateral regulations, next month (if the EU doesn't obstruct it), which would allow the ratio of flights to change from the current 1:1 to 3:1. US carriers are probably waiting to see how things pan out, before planning for capacity next year; I'd expect most existing SNN flights to survive (after all, they'll need to if they want flights to DUB), BUT they'd look pretty silly if they had only one DUB flight for each to SNN, when they could have three.
Leaving aside EI, let's look at the Americans:
CO Second EWR made nonstop; daily to IAH.
DL CVG, BOS?
(It'll be interesting to see where they'll be sending those 757s they're allegedly converting to ETOPS)
US CLT, possibly second to PHL (although they have a shortage of acft)
AA JFK? BOS? MIA/DFW
(This will be an interesting one; I'm guessing that although EI is no longer in oneworld, they'll come to an agreement with AA, since feed through these major AA hubs will be vital)
NW If they last that long ... can't see what else they can do? MEM or MSP seem unlikely?
UA Will probably wait until stopover is completely gone, although they do have ETOPS 757s, which they could send to SNN and then do DUB-SFO, IAD, ORD?
So, certainly a double edged sword for EI, BUT for numbers, a big boost for DUB (and let's not think of where the DAA is going to put all of these aircraft!!!), but from the point of view of making an application to the EU Commission, that's a hell of a lot of new capacity and for the EU to say NO to this would certainly cause a lot of political problems - particularly if the EU wants to rescusitate the Constitution ...
Don't forget that the EU used Competition Law as the grounds to take action against Germany a few years back, leading to the decision which allowed the EU to take negotiating power into its own hands, so to use that power now to maintain a competitive disadvantage would be hypocritical in the extreme.