I think that CPT is already covered by GSM, but competition never heart anybody (except Mytravelite!:O)

I think that all these long haul destinations would only come about from it's new base if the short haul flights were to prove themselves. No good sending 2 or 3 A330s to a base that can't fill a A320!

Would love it to be MAN, which would give it a real boost and help it's quest to regain 3rd busiest airport and push for 2nd. Afterall, MAN is wanting to be the 2nd biggest by 2020!:D

:= Belfast ( i hope, i think they would do better there with less competition from other airlines.:ok:

More Loco competition.

EZT and LS have major bases at the airport, plus BE operate from nearby BHD. Connecting Belfast with any UK destination is now quite difficult to do without serious competition.

Only markets available from Belfast that will be sustainable are Germany and further East.

Only markets available from Belfast that will be sustainable are Germany and further East

LHR an absolute winner 250,000 plus pa guaranteed, BD currently has monoply, charges what it likes (expensive) loads of folk actually travel to Dub use EI to get to LHR as its cheaper. EI know this, they can achieve the necessary slots, know the market, its a safe route to establish a base that will actually work. ie they will have a route that will have a very high volume of traffic that EZY, RYR etc cannot compete on. They don't need any other UK routes. The other aircraft would do Brussels, Frankfurt etc

Aer Lingus are not planning a Belfast base
 

This language does not suggest BFS. Imagine if Aer Lingus were to announce: "Our new foreign hub outside of Ireland is Belfast". I think straight away they'd upset a lot of their potential passengers.

This language does not suggest BFS. Imagine if Aer Lingus were to announce: "Our new foreign hub outside of Ireland is Belfast". I think straight away they'd upset a lot of their potential passengers.Today 00:27
Airlines like to deal with airports, you know keep them on there toes, during the negotiation stage, therefore to say they are opening a base in Ireland, well I wonder where that would be hmmmm Knock, Londonderry, or maybe BELFAST. Also if Aer Lingus was to open a base in Belfast, the airline would be marketed as serving the whole of Ireland. Aer Lingus and Ireland as a whole has moved on and most people have now accepted that Northern Ireland is in the UK as a matter of fact, they may not be happy with that, but in the business world polictical correctness is foremost. If they were to announce BFS as their new UK base, Unionist would be happy with the wording, nationalists would be happy that their national airline was now available from their local airport. Anyway I think that 99% of people really wouldn't give a toss about the wording.

Getting slots at Frankfurt is almost as hard as getting slots at Heathrow, especially slots for peak times

I like most of the population of the Republic, and a significant proportion of the population of the North would still, and will always disagree with you on that one, but I don't think you should be bringing political comments into this forum

From Air Transport News:

Ryanair, Ireland’s largest airline, today (28th May) condemned SIPTU for holding Irish passengers to ransom at the Dublin airport monopoly. SIPTU is refusing to move into the new Area 14 check in zone until its members are bought off with €1000 each. Irish passengers are being forced to endure more queues and third world overcrowding because Dublin Airport is a SIPTU controlled monopoly.
If the DAA monopoly is allowed to build and run a second terminal, SIPTU will hold passengers to ransom there too. Competition works for passengers. SIPTU controlled monopolies clearly don’t.

Speaking today Ryanair’ s Head of Communications Peter Sherrard said;

“Once again SIPTU is treating the travelling public with utter contempt and showing that it controls the Dublin Airport Monopoly. If T2 is built and operated by the SIPTU controlled DAA monopoly, the same abuse, queues and contempt for passengers will spread there too. It is time to put passengers first at Dublin airport, by introducing competing terminals and breaking this SIPTU controlled monopoly”.


S78

Terminal Row is resolved

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0528/airport.html

The new base is likely to be found among the list of destinations currently served from Cork (although Glasgow isn't out of the question).

There is a possibility that it's just about streamlining operations at Heathrow, but if it isn't, your list of candidates is Birmingham, Manchester, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich, Malaga, Rome, Prague, Warsaw, Barcelona and Berlin.

You can rule out Amsterdam and Paris because they won't want to piss off AF/KLM. Munich doesn't really have enough of a volume to Ireland. Berlin and Rome are not much better.

That brings you down to Birmingham, Manchester, Malaga, Prague, Warsaw and Barcelona (with Glasgow still not ruled out).

The question is, whether they want to look at flying people from across Europe to the Mediterranean (Not likely IMO), providing services to Eastern European migrant workers (more plausible) or will play it safe with a service to somewhere the brand is relatively well known (most likely).

Logically, it would seem to strongly favour one of Birmingham, Glasgow or Manchester. Looking at competition and slot issues, Birmingham looks like a slight favourite.

Long-haul from the new base wouldn't start for a long while yet. EI don't have enough aircraft to fly all the desired long-haul routes from Dublin, never mind a new base.

Also, talk of long-haul destinations not in the current network is very wide of the mark.

I've just booked a Milan-Dublin return flight at 70 euro all inclusive with the new AerLingus special offer. Nice...;)

Very good price for several routes...

RE/EI interline for domestic routes
 

From today's Irish Times:

"Passengers using Aer Arann's domestic flights could soon be able to use the network of transatlantic services operated by Aer Lingus.

The two airlines are in detailed negotiations about a ticketing link-up that would allow Aer Arann passengers to book flights via Dublin to the United States with Aer Lingus.

Similarly, passengers flying with Aer Lingus from the US would be able to use Aer Arann's services from Dublin to Cork, Donegal, Sligo, Knock and Galway.

The airlines are working on a number of technology issues to allow passengers to book flights online using one ticket.

They also hope to offer passengers a facility to check baggage straight through to their final destination.

Gary Cullen, Aer Arann's chief executive, said the service could go live by the end of August. "We're hopeful that a deal can be concluded in the summer," Mr Cullen said.

Aer Lingus is targeting passengers travelling to the US from Cork, a large number of whom currently fly via London with BA. "Our main focus will be Cork," said Enda Corneille, Aer Lingus's commercial director. "That's where we could capture traffic that's been slipping away to Heathrow."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Although ORK is the main focus, this is an excellent development for all domestic airports and there is potential for it to be extended to UK regional routes.

EI-DUO First Flight
 

EI-DUO will operate its first scheduled flight this morning, operating flight EI-145 from Dublin to Los Angeles, scheduled to depart at 1015z.

If you go to the below link, and fast forward to 01hr 49mins, you will hear a review of EI-DUO which was broadcast on Tuesday on Drivetime:

www.rte.ie/radio1/player_...esday.smil

Then Aer Arann will become Aer Lingus Connect etc. and end up being sold to Flybe!:p

From reading that, it only applies to transatlantic flights. Once the arrangement is in place, it may as well be applied to European ones as well.

Any idea if Aer Arann will change to Aer Lingus handling in Cork? It would be nice to use the self-service machines to check through. It could also be potentially confusing for some passengers to find that they have an Aer Lingus ticket, but aren't checking in with Aer Lingus.

How is Dublin as a transfer airport nowadays? I haven't switched there in about 18 months, but it used to be a pain to have to go out landside and then have to come back through security again. If they haven't fixed that up, I'd be inclined to continue using Schiphol.

I think it's an excellent development; to the best of my knowledge, I don't think RE has "interlined" in the past, which means that passengers to/from domestic markets had to pick up bags/check in again at DUB - hardly a pleasant prospect. This should make the whole experience better and make regional destinations more attractive for US travellers.

I would expect to see this being expanded; there's quite a few regional UK routes (Jersey being one) which are not quite big enough to handle A320s on anything more than a seasonal or (max) once daily service; RE could operate these, feed into EI long haul and release A320s for longer routes.

Together with the JetBlue deal, whenever that comes to fruition, presumably EI pax could check all the way through from (say) TPA-JFK-DUB-GWY/vice versa?

Lets not forget that EI also have a new codesharing agreement with UA as well out IAD and SFO (keeping them at bay for now on new T/A routes), all in all EI are doing pretty well at the moment, new aircraft, and new codesharing and interlining, things should do very well for them.

Perhaps a buy out is on the cards for Aer Arann by Aer Lingus in time. Has been always rumoured. Aer Arann recently shedding ground handling in Dublin and outsourcing to SHP. Business and Finance magazine rumouring that the company is slimming up in line for a buy out.
Would think that it would make good business sense in time for Aer Lingus to buy them out. You could then open up ORK to transatlantic and use all the current UK routes served by RE to boost pax numbers. Surely running an ATR on routes to Mancester, BHX, CWL full would make more sense that operating a half full Airbus during lower seasons. It would free these up for the longer routes. Aer Arann took delivery of it's first 500 series this week so it will be interesting to see the pax reaction to it. It's being marketed as being in the same noise range as a jet.

If Aer Lingus were to take Aer Arann over I would hope that they'd replace the ATR's by small jets; say Embraer's or CRJ's...

"If Aer Lingus were to take Aer Arann over I would hope that they'd replace the ATR's by small jets; say Embraer's or CRJ's..."

Yes but when you consider a fuel burn of an ATR being 600 kgs an hour the economics of it suggest it would be far better suited than a jet of similar size.