Aer Lingus Fleet/Routes Discussion

billy few mates

Who are we to criticise those passengers who opened those doors when we weren’t there...?
It’s all well and good sitting here reading the facts after the event and deciding we know what those people should have done but we have no idea what was going through their minds or what sort of people they were or how mentally prepared they were for holding the responsibility of manning those exits. I’ve sat there dozens of times, I’ve had the safety briefings but I’ve never for one minute considered I might actually have to be called into action and thankfully I’ve never been involved in an incident.
It’s likely somebody opened the first one out of panic and the others just followed as a reflex or chain reaction and before you know it, all the hatches are open. We have all the facts here and we can see it was the wrong decision but we don’t have the adrenaline or fear factor that also occurs in situations like these. Wrong decisions only become apparent with hindsight but indecisiveness can also be a killer, sometimes no decision is worse than an incorrect decision as in the case of the 300 people who died in the Saudi Tristar incident waiting for an evacuation call that never came...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudia_Flight_163

Many airlines sell these particular seat at a premium because of the extra leg room, maybe it’s time to review the criteria of who should be allowed sit there instead of flogging it to whoever wants to stump up twenty quid for it?
Last night on a flight, travelling alone I was asked if I’d like to man the empty seat at the overlong exit, I politely declined because I already had a complete row to myself, it would have meant moving three or four rows further back down the cabin (delaying my exit on arrival) but mostly because those seats are the coldest seats on the A/C.

kona

Mebuntu wrote: »

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It would create a dangerous precedent if the pax got the bill

Id have thought quite the opposite. The most dangerous precedent has been set, you just cannot have people doing whatever they like on a aircraft. They were briefed before and im fairly certain at no stage were they ordered to do what they did.
Procedures are there for a reason and have been written over the course of 80 odd years of commercial transport. Passengers do not know better.
Basically if your near a exit sit down and wait until your told what to do.
They are lucky nobody slipped off that wing or they didnt hit a worker down below with a flying door.

goingnowhere

I'm routinely offered the exit row due status if the crew need to fill the seats. I decline most of the time as I've had a drink in the lounge and therefore would not meet the required standard to man the door. Crew are surprised to say the least when I give this as the reason.

You open the door for two reasons only
1. Clear instruction to do by any crew member
2. Where you deem that your life is in danger and leaving the aircraft is the only option.

Neither applied in Cork, and the cabin crew are basically trained to do same, await flight deck instruction or if circumstances demand it initiate evacuation, there is a evacuation button in the FAP so the cabin crew can trigger evac

If I'm on a A321 in the A seat at the exit, if the cabin crew on the G side cracks the door, I would do so immediately on my side assuming no visible reason for not doing so. That said the A321 is a hell of a lot nicer to do an evacuation on due the 8 large doors with power assist opening

smurfjed

Just remember that when things go wrong, they can go wrong pretty fast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qyZFASOAe0

Tenger

I don’t know the details of the incident but after chatting to an EI source the consensus seems to be that the flight crew assessed the situation after landing, recognizing that there was no immediate danger theymade the decision to get onstand and disembark. (I haven’t listened to the ATC so can’t comment on any interaction with airport emergency response)
They then issued the command to ‘exit’ the aircraft immediately leaving all bags behind. It seems that some pax took that to meant ‘evacuate’ and opened the overwing exits.

I’m reliably told that EI crew will not only use the word ‘evacuate’ in very specific circumstances, ie. the incident in Orlando a while back was an immediate exit rather than an evacuate situation.

zetalambda

Mr McDonagh said that, upon landing in Cork, people were instructed to leave their belongings onboard and to exit the plane as quickly as possible.

Maybe the people sitting next to the emergency exits took this instruction a bit too literally. To be fair, i'm sure they could argue they did exactly as they were instructed.

I'm not sure anyone could be charged with anything resulting from this incident unless you can be charged with overreacting/panicking during an emergency in a confined space surrounded by highly combustible jet fuel!

kona

zetalambda wrote: »

highly combustible jet fuel!

Its not highly combustable

JCX BXC

If your car breaks down do you panic and break the windscreen and climb out?

joeysoap

I'm only coming to this story now. Were the overwing doors on both sides thrown out or only one side? Is there overwing chutes or did someone activate the front and rear chutes too?

I have been allocated (never bought them) emergency row seats a few times, AL and Turkish airlines. In the case of AL the cabin crew asked me if I could manage to open the doors if I needed to. and in the case of Turkish, well nobody said anything that I can recall. I would assume only in an emergency would the cabin crew actually brief you on how to manage the doors?

Locker10a

joeysoap wrote: »

I'm only coming to this story now. Were the overwing doors on both sides thrown out or only one side? Is there overwing chutes or did someone activate the front and rear chutes too?

I have been allocated (never bought them) emergency row seats a few times, AL and Turkish airlines. In the case of AL the cabin crew asked me if I could manage to open the doors if I needed to. and in the case of Turkish, well nobody said anything that I can recall. I would assume only in an emergency would the cabin crew actually brief you on how to manage the doors?

No main door chutes were used as no evacution was oredered. Some pax walked onto the wing and were orders back into the cabin for their own safety.
Passengers seated by an over wing exit are required to be briefed before every departure. However I’m not surprised this didn’t happen on TK(but that’s a whole other thread) in a preplanned emergency the crew would again give a more in-depth briefing to exit row pax

JCX BXC

Would you like to actually debate, or are you just using tactics to avoid doing so?

Nibs05

Rumour has it AL has acquired the ex monarch A321, 1 of the A321's has had her engines removed so it it could be true.

Van.Bosch

From the IAG cap markets presentation we can finally forget about EI and the A350.

A big jump in LH capacity in 2019 as 4 of the A321’s are in service with no 757 retirements.

JCX BXC

So in essence it'll be 4 new narrowbody transatlantic routes/ frequency increases?

Any ideas what we could see?

Tenger

Van.Bosch wrote: »

From the IAG cap markets presentation we can finally forget about EI and the A350.

They took their time, there has been a lack of clarity about the IAG plans for their B787/A350 orders since this time last year.

Van.Bosch

Tenger wrote: »

They took their time, there has been a lack of clarity about the IAG plans for their B787/A350 orders since this time last year.

Yup and they still don’t spell it out although the graphic is clear.

mikel97

Nibs05 wrote: »

Rumour has it AL has acquired the ex monarch A321, 1 of the A321's has had her engines removed so it it could be true.

Not at All

Bussywussy

Nibs05 wrote: »

Rumour has it AL has acquired the ex monarch A321, 1 of the A321's has had her engines removed so it it could be true.

Why would it be true if engines removed?? Its not true anyway

sandbelter

Tenger wrote: »

Van.Bosch wrote: »

From the IAG cap markets presentation we can finally forget about EI and the A350.

They took their time, there has been a lack of clarity about the IAG plans for their B787/A350 orders since this time last year.

Given IAG like to "sweat"their frames and EI has a number new builds ...it's pushing the A330 replacement into the late 2020's.   

It's pretty clear IAG's strategy is:
Transatlantic expansion with existing technology and variations/plus new frame;
Get SH to meet ROIC targets;
Brace for the inevitable arrival of US low costs into Ireland or Ryanair transatlantic;

Given A350 is being penciled into for 15 to 17 hour transpacific flight you'd have to question it's suitability for EI.

Always thought that EI was a 787-10 kind of airline anyway.   But I don't see a decision before 2025 at the earliest.

basill

My take is that the 330s will enable expansion futher West and the 321s will backfill the east coast and possibly enable NE Canada eg: Halifax etc. I think it will largely be demand driven as to what airframes operate the east coast routes.

goingnowhere

Getting rid of the -200 hulls gets you a uniform fleet and 30 more seats.

Or you use the -200's for new routes beyond the A321LR's range

Kournikova

sandbelter wrote: »

Brace for the inevitable arrival of US low costs into Ireland or Ryanair transatlantic;

I was probably early teens when this initiative was first floated and I'm now in my late 20s. The much anticipated but never close to frutition Ryanair long-haul.

Locker10a

Kournikova wrote: »

sandbelter wrote: »

Brace for the inevitable arrival of US low costs into Ireland or Ryanair transatlantic;

I was probably early teens when this initiative was first floated and I'm now in my late 20s. The much anticipated but never close to frutition Ryanair long-haul.

Ryanair plan to actually team up with Aer Lingus and offer connecting flights and codeshares between the two carriers networks. Supposed to begin in 2018

Tenger

goingnowhere wrote: »

Getting rid of the -200 hulls gets you a uniform fleet and 30 more seats.

Or you use the -200's for new routes beyond the A321LR's range

Current plan (source is an IAG graphic) is for a 24 frame T/A fleet in 2022, 12 A321LRs to supplement 12 A330's (incl the 4 -200's and EI-GCF)

Im not sure where the 4 extra LRs will come from, probably some leasing deal similar to how they added the 8th.
Plan is 4 A321LRs in 2019, 8 in 2020, 12 in 2021

Aircraft mad 1

Aerlingus will not take any aircraft off airberlin or monarch ��

Noxegon

That's a huge number. I wonder if that will actually happen.

Tenger

Noxegon wrote: »

That's a huge number. I wonder if that will actually happen.

The 12 A321LR?

Noxegon

A fleet of 24 transatlantic aircraft.

alancostello

Noxegon wrote: »

A fleet of 24 transatlantic aircraft.

It’s a 50% increase on current fleet numbers, but only roughly a 30% increase in total TATL capacity. Which if the past few years of growth keeps up(as well as the addition of successful new destinations) I don’t see it being unused.

L1011

alancostello wrote: »

It’s a 50% increase on current fleet numbers, but only roughly a 30% increase in total TATL capacity. Which if the past few years of growth keeps up(as well as the addition of successful new destinations) I don’t see it being unused.

The 757s really do need to be counted in the numbers; and the extra 330 that'll be operating from the start of S18

16->24 is not as huge a jump as 11->24.

I suspect EI could profitably use another two 757-size and another two 330-size frames in S18 already. There should be further growth beyond that but the regional and mainline shorthaul network needs to grow to feed particularly if there's going to be more niche US East coast destinations.