[Article] Aer Lingus in web link up with Jet Blue

Victor

http://www.rte.ie/business/2007/0206/aerlingus.html

Aer Lingus in web link up with Jet Blue
Tuesday, 6 February 2007 20:05

Aer Lingus is to form an online partnership with low-fares US carrier Jet Blue, which allow Irish and US travellers book seats on the Aer Lingus website between Ireland and 51 destinations in one go.

Aer Lingus says from late September customers will be able to make a booking on aerlingus.com which allows them to travel from Ireland to the US, and onto a Jet Blue flight to 51 destinations across the US, Mexico and the Caribbean.

Aer Lingus said the move significantly extends its reach into North America, and opens up the Irish market for millions of US passengers who can access the Aer Lingus website.

AdvertisementAer Lingus CEO, Dermot Mannion, said today that the web link-up is costing virtually nothing, as it is being developed in-house, yet will be a boost to revenue and give access to millions of US passengers.

BendiBus

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10008980.shtml

JetBlue had not made its own announcement on the link-up at the time of posting this report, which may or may not signal that its expectations are more measured.

Other sources suggest it's not even a done deal yet.

dowlingm

yes Dermot, that was worth leaving Oneworld for :rolleyes:

secret_squirrel

dowlingm wrote:

yes Dermot, that was worth leaving Oneworld for :rolleyes:

Oneworld was irrelevant to Aer Lingus. They only had direct links to about half the one world partners.

Strangely enough if you investigate you will see that they still have links with all the oneworld carriers that made them any money. :cool:

The jetblue linkup is interesting - if a little speculative. Still at least it shows that someone in Aer Lingus management has a bit more imagination than the old 'lets copy ryanair' strategy that they have been pursueing.

dowlingm

SS - given that American, Malev, Finnair, BA and Iberia are or have been in the Irish market, there were plenty of on-carriage opportunities especially for the first three. But that would involve DUB being a useful rather than useless place to transfer.

CX (MAN), JAL (LHR), LAN (MAD) and Qantas (at LHR or FRA) could have been codeshared not to mention Royal Jordanian who know SNN well. If WestJet comes into Oneworld as seems likely it would give future EI services to Canada on-carriage. With JAL, RJ and MA coming in (and probably WestJet) EI fleeing alliances is a sign of their continuing trek to Ryanairland. They probably had to pay a break fee to do it, too.

secret_squirrel

dowlingm wrote:

SS - given that American, Malev, Finnair, BA and Iberia are or have been in the Irish market, there were plenty of on-carriage opportunities especially for the first three

You must have missed me saying this :

secret_squirrel wrote:

Strangely enough if you investigate you will see that they still have links with all the oneworld carriers that made them any money

They are still getting 90% of the benefits of being in oneworld, without 90% of the costs involved.

I would bet leaving oneworld involved a net gain in revenue for them.

Victor

O_o

http://www.rte.ie/business/2007/0221/jetblue.html

JetBlue says flight problems to hit profits
Wednesday, 21 February 2007 17:25
JetBlue Airways said today the huge number of flight cancellations it suffered last week would result in a wider-than-expected loss for the first quarter and said it would cut full-year profit.

The budget airline, which cancelled 1,200 flights after an ice storm disrupted its New York operations on 14 February has already said the cancellations will cost it $30m or more.

JetBlue said it expects a first-quarter pre-tax loss margin of 10% to 8%. On 30 January it said it was expecting a loss of 4% to 2%.

AdvertisementAer Lingus recently announced it was forming an online partnership with the budget US carrier to allow Irish and US travellers to use the Aer Lingus website to book seats to 51 North American destinations.

dowlingm

SS - I misread your prior post apologies. However, if you can have "90%" of the benefits without oneworld, why are JAL, Royal J and Malev joining?

secret_squirrel

Because EI only gets net gains from BA, FN, IB all the rest cost them money.


EI dont have the interconnections that the others would have. Basically you have LHR for IB, BA and FN. Dublin for BA, IB and FN. Plus some of the spanish destinations for IB. And pretty much nothing else.

The traffic to Japan and the middle east (outside of dubai) is insignificant. Even Dubai is pretty crap.

EI are a regional airline essentially trying to compete with global airlines and they have to pick and choose whats good for them.

In general the revenue split on a multi stop flight is biased towards the airline running the shorter route, but thats still not enough if you only have a couple of a passengers a week doing it once you take into account the costs of setting up the systems to cope with it.

Victor

secret_squirrel wrote:

Because EI only gets net gains from BA, FN, IB all the rest cost them money. EI dont have the interconnections that the others would have. Basically you have LHR for IB, BA and FN. Dublin for BA, IB and FN. Plus some of the spanish destinations for IB. And pretty much nothing else.

Enough with the TLAs!*


* Two- and three-letter acronyms.