''Omg wots the obsession with airlingus and crossing the atlantic ocean!!!!!!!!! Take the tunnel vision goggles off guys. thrers a whole world of out there to explore. think outside the box. ei should be looking at emerging markets too. use the new fangled longer range a/c to look at africa, the ex soviet stans, china, hongkong, hokiday routes like sri lanka goa etc.''
The obsession with Aer Lingus and transatlantic routes, is the fact that EI makes money from operating these services. There is also a decent sized market for Ireland-USA due to business and cultural ties. Aer Lingus is also trying to leverage its position in Europe to operate a hub for Europe-USA/USA-Europe traffic
''Thinking outside the box'' was left in the days of the Celtic Tiger. There is a whole world out there to explore, but there are plenty of airlines fighting hard for this traffic. Emirates and Etihad are strong competitors and offer cheap fares to China, Hong Kong etc, which would eliminate any chance of Aer Lingus operating direct services to the East. Aer Lingus have said they are happy to feed BA and KL/AF via their hubs. If this makes them money, this is what should be done.
Sri Lanka and Goa are heavily leisure orientated routes, and would never work from Ireland. UK-Goa routes are operated by Monarch on a charter basis only.