davidjohnson6 and EI-BUD, my strategy for Aer Lingus would build on its strengths, reduce costs and recognise that specialisation is the only way forward. Some items are listed below
Strengths:
1.Aer Lingus is a well known and probably much loved brand within Ireland. It is in a similar position within the areas of the USA that it serves. MOL recognised that in his takeover offers and proposed to continue with it.
2. The seas around Ireland and Britain give Aer Lingus a massive advantage in that there is no serious surface based competitive threat.
3. It serves some of the largest airports in Europe and faces no real competition from anyone on those routes. It co-habits even with RYR on many routes.
4. I cannot find anything wrong with their in-flight service. It seems popular, delivered in a friendly way and with those excellent hot breakfasts and chicken sandwiches.
5. The thing it does best is fly from Dublin to AMS, CDG,FRA, LHR, etc. It outschedules and outcarries the main European airlines on those routes. That is its core business and it seems to do it well. It can have as an objective that it will be the preferred airline on those routes. In my view the principal management effort should be to increase these strengths. It does not need Star or any other alliance to do this. Joining Star will seriously inhibit their freedom. They should compete not cooperate with these airlines.
6. The long haul business will always be a high risk area for them. That is because the Irish market is simply not big enough to support large aircraft operations on many routes. There are limited opportunities on leisure routes, possible low frequencies to the Caribbean and Sharm. US carriers feeding their own hubs make expansion to the States very difficult.
Costs:
1. EIN have the costs of a long haul airline and short haul is their core business. I think the company should be organised into separate divisions each with its own specialist costs. Having studied such a reorganisation for another airline I am certain that this will result in a substantial cost reduction. Both divisions would keep the same brand
2. Star will add costs and reduce EIN’s freedom to compete. It should therefore be abandoned.
3. They should look at their own system costs. I do not know which res system they currently use but they should migrate to openskies for all short haul routes
4. They should move away from travel agents as soon as possible
Gatwick failed because they chose to get tangled up with easyJet. Dominating prime routes to/from Dublin is where they will have the lease competition. Trying to compete with EZY on the same routes out of Gatwick where EIN have no real market presence and no possibility of getting any critical mass never made any sense to me. There is no other main airport in Europe where they will be able to find secure trading conditions. So they have no choice but to concentrate on Dublin.
I do not think they will ever make a go of a hub at DUB. There are not enough long haul routes and never will be. Scheduling of connections will be a nightmare because they will have to be very good to attract traffic. Short haul schedules should be optimised around the individual route requirements and not compromised around long haul connections. Anyway the traffic that would be attracted would probably only deep discount.