Will Aer Lingus drop longhaul?

Slice

At a press briefing, Aer Lingus chairman Colm Barrington said he could not rule out compulsory redundancies if an agreement cannot be reached with its trade unions. “We have to change Aer Lingus, it cannot go on the way it is,” he said. “We have to do whatever has to be done.”

Mr Barrington said the airline was faced with a future that included a continued decline in fares, rising fuel costs and intense competition.

It is understood that about €60 million of the loss in the first half of this year related to Aer Lingus’s transatlantic flights, even though they only account for about 8 per cent of its passengers.

Full story here: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0828/breaking15.htm

highlydebased

Its unlikely that they will drop it completely, but I can see more cuts being made

Grease Monkey

No chance,its the only advantage they have over FR,if anything they need to take it to the east!!

Foggy43

The media in the UK have reported this story but locked on to this bit...

Asked on state radio what would happen if new chief executive Christoph Mueller, who is starting next week, decided to form an alliance with Ryanair, chief financial officer Sean Coyle said: "If that's what he decides and if that's what the shareholders want then I'm afraid that's the direction we'll have to go."

It makes me shiver at the thought of it!

Slice

Well in fairness it looks like longhaul is where most of the losses are stemming from. Haven't Austrian Airlines and Czech Airlines scrapped longhaul as well. These are similar sized carriers based in countries comparable in size to Ireland...

FlutterinBantam

Where have all the route cuts been made recently??

LAX. SFO !

Long haul at the yield EI are getting is not profitable.

Don't rule out a cessation.

Mailman

What are the chances they'd move the Airbus 330s to UK for even part of the week and fly from one of the larger airports like Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham with feeder flights from Dublin in to those airports. Would that get them up to the occupancy rates they need or could they do it the other way and keep them flying out of Dublin and trying to get passengers from the UK airports they serve on cheap transfer flights?

pclancy

Why dont they look at chosing different routes to new cities that might actually give them good yeilds wit the aircraft they have?

jw93

Slice wrote: »

Well in fairness it looks like longhaul is where most of the losses are stemming from. Haven't Austrian Airlines and Czech Airlines scrapped longhaul as well. These are similar sized carriers based in countries comparable in size to Ireland...

Maybe Czech Airlines have but I'm almost positive Austrian airlines still operate to over 8 long haul destinations unless its just been announced their cutting routes?

PILOT

i dont see why EI use aircraft with the size of the A330 on the Transatlantic routes especially the eastern board cities( Boston, Newyork)

The A321 has a range on 3,000 nautical miles and the distance from Dublin to JFK is 2,770 nm. With the A321 the load factors would show better yields while also saving on services such as extra Cabin Crew....

jw93

PILOT wrote: »

i dont see why EI use aircraft with the size of the A330 on the Transatlantic routes especially the eastern board cities( Boston, Newyork)

The A321 has a range on 3,000 nautical miles and the distance from Dublin to JFK is 2,770 nm. With the A321 the load factors would show better yields while also saving on services such as extra Cabin Crew....

It really doesnt make much sense especially from Shannon airport an A321 would be much better suited to operating out of Shannon but from Dublin to New York I would say there is a large enough demand to warrant the use of an A330 but for every other route I would say an A321 would suffice.

Delta Kilo

Ya but with ETOPS what route would thay have to take and would that extend the distance by more than the range of the A321?

Are many of the seats going empty on the A330? If there fairly full then it is one of the most economical aircraft to go long haul. Plus, Aer Lingus bring a lot of cargo (whiskey and waterford crystal:pac: ) to the states. Plus the legroom or IFE is not as good in the smaller aircraft so I can't see how using the A321 would help.

Dacian

PILOT wrote: »

The A321 has a range on 3,000 nautical miles and the distance from Dublin to JFK is 2,770 nm. With the A321 the load factors would show better yields while also saving on services such as extra Cabin Crew....

An A321 would be very suspectible to bad weather over the Atlantic, diversions could happen easily. A330 fly ETOPS which is a more direct route,I'm not sure but the A321 may not be able to do so.
While EI may have less than full loads on their A330s, having an upper limit of 200 on their A321 is overly restricting themselves.

Mailman wrote: »

What are the chances they'd move the Airbus 330s to UK for even part of the week and fly from one of the larger airports like Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham with feeder flights from Dublin in to those airports.

Doing so you are moving into another airlines market at a time when the market is shrinking. If EI tried to operate out of LGW, Virgin Atlantic would wipe the floor with them. And I don't think much of a market exists out of MAN or BHX, do BA o Virgin operate many longhaul flights from there!