Aer Lingus & the A350 900

WishUWereHere

Happy New Year everyone.

I bought the latest edition of Airliner World. On page 40 there is a list of all the orders for the A350XWB's. They say AL have 9 of the 900's on order ( the feature also lists the 1000 btw).

This true? I was aware they had 6 ordered but this feature says 9. Also when will they start arriving? And where are they destined to fly to?

Sorry for all the questions!

Jamie2k9

The have 9 ordered however nobody knows for certain if any will be delivered. Plan was for 3 in 18, 19 and 20.

Last IAG presentation in the last 2 months showed ZERO 350’s for EI in at least the next FOUR years. It looked clear enough to me from that that EI were not getting the ones they ordered. I don’t know how much extra information people need at this point to see that these nine are not coming to EI.

Personally the 350 won’t happen for EI till the price of fuel rockets again. There likely isn’t enough cost savings benefit yet over initial outlay.

AoifeOCaa

Deleted User wrote: »

Last IAG presentation in the last 2 months showed ZERO 350’s for EI in at least the next FOUR years. It looked clear enough to me from that that EI were not getting the ones they ordered. I don’t know how much extra information people need at this point to see that these nine are not coming to EI.

Personally the 350 won’t happen for EI till the price of fuel rockets again. There likely isn’t enough cost savings benefit yet over initial outlay.

from another point of view, that IAG presentation was showing 25 aircrafts (with the addition 330-200 from Qatar in May this year plus the 12 a321LR). I wonder, with such a big increase on the long haul fleet and dub as a hub, will they still counting on their limited short haul network or would they finally get an agreement with another airline like Ryanair to feed their atlantic services?

I just noticed that some new routes like PHL, SEA, BDL miss lots of connections to many european cities due to the early departure slot / late arrival.

Other idea would be overnighiting a320s in some european key cities, having earlier arrivals in Dublin in order to connect to their atlantic flights?

At this point only LHR and a few UK west coast cities still on time to connect to flights like the ei105/101/137/123 (early jfk ord ewr and bos) and I'm pretty sure that a few (at least) of those a321LR will be serving atlantic routes departing quite early too.

1123heavy

AoifeOCaa wrote: »

from another point of view, that IAG presentation was showing 25 aircrafts (with the addition 330-200 from Qatar in May this year plus the 12 a321LR). I wonder, with such a big increase on the long haul fleet and dub as a hub, will they still counting on their limited short haul network or would they finally get an agreement with another airline like Ryanair to feed their atlantic services?

I just noticed that some new routes like PHL, SEA, BDL miss lots of connections to many european cities due to the early departure slot / late arrival.

Other idea would be overnighiting a320s in some european key cities, having earlier arrivals in Dublin in order to connect to their atlantic flights?

At this point only LHR and a few UK west coast cities still on time to connect to flights like the ei105/101/137/123 (early jfk ord ewr and bos) and I'm pretty sure that a few (at least) of those a321LR will be serving atlantic routes departing quite early too.

This gonna lay the foundations of another union bloodbath?

Jamie2k9

1123heavy wrote: »

This gonna lay the foundations of another union bloodbath?

Union's wouldn't;t in a position to disrupt crew overnight in Europe, through such practice is a long way off IMO.

LXFlyer

1123heavy wrote: »

This gonna lay the foundations of another union bloodbath?

Why should it?

Aer Lingus used to do it in several locations such as Paris and Amsterdam.

It still happens at London Heathrow, with two aircraft overnighting there.

WishUWereHere

Deleted User wrote: »

Last IAG presentation in the last 2 months showed ZERO 350’s for EI in at least the next FOUR years. It looked clear enough to me from that that EI were not getting the ones they ordered. I don’t know how much extra information people need at this point to see that these nine are not coming to EI.

Personally the 350 won’t happen for EI till the price of fuel rockets again. There likely isn’t enough cost savings benefit yet over initial outlay.

I based my opening message based on Airliner World's report - Surely they are renowned in the commercial aviation industry?

goingnowhere

The confusion arrises in that the aircraft are still on order and will be built however the order is administered by IAG so any IAG airline can get it.

Currently EI is getting its A330-300 via options Iberia held.

sandbelter

Maybe it's time to ask the question does the A350-900 actually have a place in EI's fleet going forward?
After all when EI initially order the aircraft in 2007, the market especially to the US east coast was different from today, the marker has fragmented away from the big east coast hubs, especially to Ireland, as we see more B737 max and soon A321lr's enter the market.  
By-pass risk with Primera Air flying regional UK to US direct, low cost competition from Norwegian and now the prospect of JetBlue ordering A321's to fly from BOS and JFK  mean two things.  First more accelerated by-pass of big hubs (EI's DUB to BDL and expansion to the west coast being a prime examples), second transatlantic price competition to the US NE seems set to intensify.   Apart from MIA, MCO, SEA, SFO, and LAX EI's route's suit the A321lr better.  
This is what Willie Walsh"had to say  back in 2016 in travel extra "So instead of having one A330 you could have two A321s. The advantage of that is that it makes the Dublin` hub much stronger. It gives additional flexibility for people to connect from Dublin. That’s particularly attractive"....also said that "Aer Lingus would consider the Boeing MOM option if it arose."   
[font=Open Sans, Arial, sans-serif]To me this is an airline flagging its capex for EI will be in the 200 seat range, not the 300 seat range.  So no A350's (or B787's for that matter, and sweating the A330 until at least 2030 would be my guess. [/font]  But perhaps the MOM.

goingnowhere

The real selling point of the A350 was for LAX/SFO where its hard to justify double daily where the extra seats would make a difference as would the efficiency improvement due to the long distance.

For BOS/JFK/ORD the A330-300 numbers are too close to the A350 to make the case, but EI has a stack of -200 to replace so timing was good.

Obviously the game changed when the A330 neo appeared