And Belfast gets nothing just same bucket spade routes.
To be fair to EI-330 says Aer Lingus has tried many different markets some that were just too ambitious, I feel that AMS would have worked if there was an interlining with KLM. In any case looking at BFS and the approach of Jet2, who have many seasonal niche routes such as Dubrovnik, Toulouse, Pisa, Blackpool etc, they have started looking at the busy and arguably saturated sun routes such as Alicante as these are the routes where the demand exists. Plain and simply we have a limited market, 2 airports competing for quite a small prize and Dublin not far away to offer the range of destinations and often low fares from Ryanair and Aer Lingus too.
We are not getting a good share of inbound tourists on European routes, I fly frequently to Spain and I never see many if any Spaniards on the flights, but when I fly to/from Dublin there are many.
Obscure routes wont work with a large aircraft or without good inbound demand.
P.S add Geneva and Munich to that list of routes closed!
Aer Lingus have tried Amsterdam, Rome (being dropped), Milan, Paris and I think Budapest. Only so much an airline can do. With the base dropping to 2 A319 and 1 A320 does that not tell people anything....Sun routes can't even sustain a A320 and only reason a A320 is staying for LPA, ACE, TFS which EI would do with a A319 if they could.
I think A320 is sustainable on Sun routes for EI, the problem is the seasonality of the markets and with a 319 on in winter greater chance of some profit, or more than currently achieving. I think the 319 will be a nice little experiment for EI. Nice to see this winter that routes like ALC are doing surprisingly well I was on 3 weeks ago and there was 120 on the flight back which is good for November!
EI-BUD