The Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, is leading a large Irish delegation to the Middle East, leaving today and will be visiting Saudi, Abu Dhabi and Dubai; it will be interesting to see if his visit to Abu Dhabi might include talks with Etihad top brass.
Today, in an Irish newspaper, the Sunday Tribune, Conor McCarthy (who has a small shareholding in the new Air Asia off-shoot, Fly Asia Express) expressed a view that the carrier would serve DUB and that this might happen before EI's "long awaited" service to Asia, so the pressure is certainly on EI to get its act together.