Fare wars: airlines set for battle

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Looks like things are gonna kick off at DUB

Fare wars: airlines set for battle

RYANAIR is set to hit Aer Lingus with an all-out fares war on routes between Dublin and the Continent.

Massive savings for travellers are in the air as a result of secret negotiations between the budget carrier and Dublin Airport Authority (DAA).

Ryanair intends to add 20 new routes out of Dublin to continental Europe.

It has offered to move to the basement of Dublin Airport to relieve chronic overcrowding and is willing to drop all its objections to the airport's contentious €1.2bn expansion plan.

It has even indicated it would be willing to access its planes through a temporary 'tented' pier.

But there is a downside for the new DAA chief executive Declan Collier in his attempt to find a radical solution to the capacity problem at the airport.

Michael O'Leary's budget airline will only go ahead if it can secure a significant reduction in passenger charges.

Although good news for consumers, the deal would be catastrophic for Aer Lingus, which operates on more than 40 routes between Dublin and the Continent.

For the past five years the national carrier has been protected from significant competition on most of these routes by a row over airport charges between Ryanair on one side and the government and Dublin Airport Authority on the other.

During that time Ryanair has refrained from any significant expansion from its Dublin base - effectively forcing customers who want to travel from Dublin to most continental destination to fly to London before making their onward flight.

Although Aer Lingus has reinvented itself as a low-cost carrier, it still has a much higher cost base than its rival.

Negotiations between the semi-state company aimed at lowering its cost base were to have concluded at the beginning of this year but are still ongoing.

One source close to those negotiations said they had "stalled", while another insider said that they were continuing but "much more slowly that was hoped".

Ryanair has told Dublin Airport that it will agree to the new arrangements if it gets a 50pc reduction in passenger charges. It is understood that while Dublin Airport is amenable to the reductions it is only willing to apply them to additional traffic brought in by Ryanair with all existing traffic being levied at the full rate.

The current rate is €5.09 but last week the aviation regulator Bill Prasifka said this would increase to an average of €6.14 over the next four years.

Ryanair has threatened a legal challenge to the increase, which also disappointed the DAA.

It was looking for a 50pc increase, partly to fund its expansion plans and partly to pay high levels of debt.

Ryanair signalled a thawing of relations with the airport authority earlier this year when it announced five new Continental routes from Dublin to Carcassonne, Biarritz, Rome, Frankfurt and Eindhoven.

PhoenixRising

It has even indicated it would be willing to access its planes through a temporary 'tented' pier.

Tents! WTF

Are we a third world county now or something? We may have a third world airport but tents as a departure lounge.....come on.

I presume Ryanair's vision for these tents would be similar to the one's they use at Beauvais Airport? What a classy airline.

jlang

I don't care whether I go through a tent or not. If Ryanair are willing to get off their high horse and launch more choices to Europe, let's do what we can to let them. I've done 2 leg trips through Stansted loads of times and if all it takes to not have to do that is using a basement and a tent, I'm all for it.

Victor

RYANAIR is set to hit Aer Lingus with an all-out fares war on routes between Dublin and the Continent.

I'm not so sure about this, Aer Lingus and Ryanair have very little overlap on mainland Europe (or any other airport).

It has even indicated it would be willing to access its planes through a temporary 'tented' pier.

I understand this will actually be a prefabricated building, not a tent.

murphaph

But isn't the point that Ryanair are to begin targetting these AerLingus routes wth 20 new routes of their own from Dublin. I hope they start flying to Cologne Bonn and Salzburg (Ryanair are never gonna fly to Munich IMO).

Imposter

murphaph wrote:

I hope they start flying to ... and Salzburg (Ryanair are never gonna fly to Munich IMO).

Linz would be far better. It would compete against Aer LIngus for Vienna and Salzburg. And of course it would make it a lot easier for me

Victor

See attached map for ex-Ireland destinations for Ryanair (yellow), Aer Lingus (green) and Aer Arann (red).

Other than a few individual points, they don't compete.

parsi

Looks surpisingly like an overbridge Victor !

Victor

Wot!??!

Never try to attach files to two different posts at the same time.

seamus

I'd still pay more to fly with Aer Lingus than to fly with Lada, sorry Ryanair.

BuffyBot

Other than a few individual points, they don't compete.

..at the moment. I think the thrust of this is that Ryanair's potential new routes will compete with Aer Lingus - maybe not to same airports, but to nearby ones. You haven't included Aer Lingus' European destinations, which is where Ryanair will most likely go head to head with them on.

mackerski

murphaph wrote:

(Ryanair are never gonna fly to Munich IMO).

They could in principle fly to Augsburg - an underutilised airport with ICE link to Munich and free car parking(*). Augsburg seemed to be keenly drumming up business a few years back, but seems to be as dead as a big dead thing these days.

Dermot

(*) Last I heard