Only reading this now.

Pilot crisis really rampant in ryanair.

Very poor journalism there.

It was obvious to most that the capacity cuts would be a mixture of route suspensions and frequency cuts, the fact that the Irish Times seemed to think t would only be the former is either them not reading properly or just to drag t out for another headline.

Well there is such much PR spin from FR you would forgive any mistake.....

Icelandair might be about to announce DUB ops soon.

Not the best news in the worldfor the BHD route I would say but honestly how many Iceland rotations can Ireland sustain

The Belfast market has lost easyJet's summer flights to KEF, so currently there is scope for BHD's Icelandair flights to do quite well in the long run.

The main question is whether Icelandair or WOW air will win in the fight for Dublin, and whether Aer Lingus will try to enter the market. Icelandair and WOW air are mainly trying to cater for transfer passengers, so there is some scope for quite a lot of weekly rotations.

4 weekly PHL on EI website.

Good to see further expansion of EI. More jobs created and more choices for the public. It’s website is saying it’s a B757 operation but on the same dates IAD, BDL ex DUB and JFK and BOS ex SNN are also listed as B757 operations. Have ASL/EI gotten their hands on another B757 or will one of the existing routes be upgauged to an A330? Any opinions or insight?

Just an error, beleive IAD will see B752 (T,Th,Sat) and upgraded to A330 (Su,M,W,F) to make way.

I wish they would bring back the dayflight to JFK year round.

This PHL route is already operated by American Airlines.

Just back from L.A. with Aer Lingus flight over was practically full with just two spare seats but today maybe 70 per cent full .

This. I'm flying via LHR to avoid the overnight.

I can't figure out if it's a deliberate leak by EI or accidental. Happens a lot......

It should do well.

The capacity to Iceland is just getting ridiculous at this stage, 17 weekly I read elsewhere. With them serving places like MAN, GLA and BHX for years they really missed a trick not coming to DUB much sooner.

Aer Lingus announced an additional 96,000 short haul seasts next sunmer and will make further route announcements in due course. They also said 8 not 7 321LR will be delivered in 2019-2020.

An additional 96k seats amounts to around one additional daily flight over the whole summer period - hardly that exciting. It seems that short haul is a real struggle for EI at the moment.

Good news for the additional A321LR though. The A321LR will be an excellent fit for EI.

Is it not plane numbers that's limiting growth?

Most every EI flight I've been on for the last few years has been jammed full. And that's about fifteen return flights in the last two years.

Thats my point. IAG have hundreds of A320s on order. Not a single additional A320 has joined the EI fleet in that time, EI seem to struggle to deliver the kind of returns IAG demand to justify additional short haul investment. Which is a shame, but with FR in the back yard, not that surprising.

It would appear that all may not be sweetness and light around Collinstown;

From The Irish Times 5th October 2017;

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/...sely-1.3243989

From the same newspaper's Cantillon business commentary section;

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/...-daa-1.3244611

The current short haul network from Aer Lingus appears very strong, we see good loads and decent mix of high frequency business routes and peak demand lead leisure destinations which must keep yield up for much of the year but where they do struggle is in finding new markets.

We've seen modest growth in short haul in the shape of one or two new routes each summer accompanied by frequency increased but those new routes come at a cost of other routes. Long gone are the days when Aer Lingus announced 5 or more short haul routes every summer!

The airline is growing overall so I think it's time they looked at the short haul fleet again, the A320 is too big for new routes and the A319 is costly to operate which is why they ditched them after a few years so a smaller jet is needed, the CSeries is fantastic, the EJet is tried and tested, even the Sukhoi seems a contender these days with a dirt cheap list price.

Unfortunately for Aer Lingus, the other IAG carriers don't need a smaller jet so IAG would need a lot of convincing to purchase a sub fleet for Aer Lingus when there's little to no business case across other parts of the group.