!! Ryanair Makes 3rd Bid For Aer Lingus !!

[VanBosh]

I still don’t get it though – why would passengers in turkey want to change in Dublin to get to America. I can see it if they wanted to fly from IST to somewhere in the States where EI flew to directly then it would work but are you suggesting that Turkish airlines would feed Dublin from other cities?

Passengers in Turkey can currently fly direct to the US with Turkisk airlines and then connect to other US destinations via their Alliance partners. If they took over EI they would have to fly to the Turkish hub in IST (if they didn’t live nearby) fly to Dublin, change there and then onto the States. If thei destination was not a major city they would need to connect again.

Anyway I look at it, stopping in Dublin is an extra connection.

Also if Turkish only own 49% why not fly them to the US directly and pass them to partners there – surely more profitable?

I must be missing something though because I struggled with the Etihad rationale too?

[Jack1985]

I have to say I see no valid reason for Turkish or Etihad for that matter to be interested in Aer Lingus. My views on a Ryanair merger is much the same.

I still don’t get it though – why would passengers in turkey want to change in Dublin to get to America

Precisely. But why else would Turkish be interested in Aer Lingus? The pension deficit although it can be sorted quickly with pain to many employees much offsets the €700m+ in cash reserves which is why many see Aer Lingus as an unattractive airline in merger terms.

I really see no plausible reason for Turkish being interested in Aer Lingus other then the TA services, the airline has good connections existing already between Istanbul and major Star Alliance hubs as has been pointed out.