Originally Posted by
Tom the Tenor
Also, through out the winter aeroplanes have been left on the ground too long at times - on Wednesday afternoons in particular when an EI A320 and a Ryanair 737 are sitting on their backsides doing nothing.
No one is going to hoodwink me in thinking that they could not be despatched somewhere successfully and reasonably profitably.
You're a regular Skibbereen Eagle, Tom. Those lads up in Dublin airline HQs cackling, rubbing their hands, and saying, "we could make more money if we flew this aircraft to XXX on Wednesday afternoons in winter... but we're not going to do that, just to stick it to Cork," clearly weren't counting on your perspicacity and resistance to hoodwinking.
Ryanair grounded something like 80 of its aircraft this winter just past because it couldn't make money flying them anywhere, on any day of the week. It appears many of its destinations can't aspire to being as lucrative as Cork on a winter Wednesday afternoon, but still, they could have made more of an effort, couldn't they?
I'm curious, though (having been in the ranks of the hoodwinked). Where
should Aer Lingus have sent their plane to on Wednesdays?
Incidentally you may want to have a play with this useful little free
Route Economics calculator - click on "Try the Demo". I tried plugging in an Aer Lingus A320 on ORK-FRA (just as an example) and it tells me that breakeven would be an 80% load factor at €80 yield. That's a substantial ask. Even if those numbers aren't exact, they're food for thought.