Omg wots the obsession with airlingus and crossing the atlantic ocean!!!!!!!!! Take the tunnel vision goggles off guys....................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.
A very easy statement to type but a possible revenue debacle in operation.
EI currently have 7 A330, you are suggesting they take 1 of this (14% of the fleet) and just launch a route to 'an emerging market' Where is the market presence? Where is the existing customer base? If it is there,how do EI get them to switch carriers?How long can EI sustain losses just to 'explore the world'. Remember if EI want to offer daily service to such longhaul destination they would have to use 2-3 aircraft, even if they source 3 more A330 to do so they have 30% of their fleet concentrated on 1-2 risky new routes with no guarantee of profit.
I agree that the reliance on T/A traffic by EI is not a good thing, however it is hard to launch longhaul routes for a small airline as the risks are so much bigger.
Lets pretend we are Emirates for example, they have 169 aircraft (wikipedia) With such a large fleet and network they could make a provision that up to 5% of their routes can be 'under development' or 'growing'. Euphemisms for not yet profitable. EK (and other large airlines) have the network momentum to absorb some losses. EI cannot do this, they absolutely require all longhaul aircraft to operate on profitable routes all year round. Just look at how they restricted ops ex-SNN over the last 14 months.Look at how reticent they are to return to West Coast ops, they think it is marginal so will not take the risk.
Now personally I think EI are being too cautious (yesterdays positive 2011 results were presented in quite a negative pessimistic manner) but I recognise the reasoning behind this caution. I don't have to like it though.