What do folk think are the chances of Belfast becoming the 1st UK base for Aer Lingus.
Personally I think that they would be quite high
I heard they are initially basing 3 airbuses at this new base.
1. LONDON HEATHROW - It would take one of these all day to operate back and forward to LHR plus one other aircraft for a rotation if say they were to have 6 per day. This route is a winner, would say its already making BD nervious about there Belfast Heathrow link (rumours of talk with BFS). Aer Lingus have experience of this exact route/competition at Dublin.
2. With so many east european workers in the whole of Ireland the North is greatly under represented in relation to options with thousands from Hungary, Portugal, Poland, Latvia etc etc a couple of flights a week to each key city would easily use up another airbus.
3. Belfast is still lacking a few key west european cities eg Frankfurt, Brussels, Copenhagen etc this would keep the other airbus busy.
4. Long haul future development. With Aer Lingus considering cities in the far east, what about some flights originating in Belfast and routing through Dublin to Dubai/Hong Kong/ Austrailia.
People tend to rule Belfast out when Bristol/ Birmingham/Glasgow are mentioned but taking into consideration some areas in the Republic which would find Belfast handier than Dublin you are talking about a catchment of not far of 2 million. In fact BFS/BHD combined traffic is around 7.1 million.