Aer Lingus Fleet/Routes Discussion

Hi all. I was on EI422 to Venice which was delyayed on Thursday morning due to a technical fault.
In the end we had to switch planes and landed over 3 hours late.
I looked it up and it's not clear to me if we are entitled to compensation under the EU rules.
Any help or direction on how to pursue would be welcome.
Thanks in advance.

Shamrockj wrote: »

Has to have parallel rest for crew to west coast e.g ldmcr otherwise business class has to be empty and used as a rest area. Economy class isn't suitable

It's amazing what an envelope has done in the past

EI has flown to BWI before and left the route. Upping frequency to IAD makes more sense if you want to drive more connections

EI was prohibited from flying to Dulles when they chose to fly to Baltimore “Washington Baltimore” in early 2000.

The then bilateral air agreement between Ireland and the US restricted EI to four cities Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York by using JFK.

Cleverly at that time Cahill used a loophole and pressure on local Governors in the US through the Irish State to add Newark (seen as a second gateway to NY) and by adding Baltimore to service Washington. The agreement labelled both those airports at the time as secondary airports and thus EI was able to proceed with them.

Obviously a complete different business model was used at that time, with mainly Irish and Americans for P2P on the transatlantics. Comparing them now, EI have an intention to boost Dulles (already adding the -300 daily next summer as it’s regularly overbooked).

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but is there anything stopping EI from flying into Reagan national in DC? Initially I just assumed it was aircraft size but I'm sure the a321lr would suit it. Obviously have CBP here should make it easier too. I had a similiar thought about La Guardia

Kev11491 wrote: »

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but is there anything stopping EI from flying into Reagan national in DC? Initially I just assumed it was aircraft size but I'm sure the a321lr would suit it. Obviously have CBP here should make it easier too. I had a similiar thought about La Guardia

Van.Bosch wrote: »

Yes - DCA only allows flights from within x distance, which Dublin would not be in. There are a limited number of exceptions though.

Same with LGA (1500mi is the limit)

Jack1985 wrote: »

There are no such “envelopes” Crew have been compensated through payroll in credits with a monetary value. It’s a very rare occurrence and now no longer possible as the business cabin has to be emptied for crew rest if an LDMCR is unavailable.

Doesn't -GEY have the six J seats behind 2L and 2R in a mini cabin? Would it suffice to block that off for crew if needed?

EASA FTLs dictate the appropriate horizontal crew rest requirements. Its there for safety. Cash doesn't nor should ever come into play.

WishUWereHere wrote: »

Anyone have any idea what's the load factor for the DFW-DUB route?

Really hope this takes off & goes all year round.

It'd be great to see but I'd be surprised, AA's long haul planes get reshuffled through the hubs from season to season, they can't even manage a year round ORD-DUB on AA.

liiga wrote: »

Is aerlingus a321neo  coming this Friday to Dublin 🀔

No, it was reported earlier in this thread that delivery was now expected on the 23rd of this month. 

Still no reports online of it flying or even completing taxi tests yet.

Tenger wrote: »

kevinandrew wrote: »

........
Still no reports online of it flying or even completing taxi tests yet.

Seems odd not to have been flight tested yet.

Definitely. I could be wrong but various sites and spotter pages have no indication of any test flights taking place, in fact the most recent update from the weekend indicates the aircraft is still in a hanger and has yet to perform under its own power. 

https://xfw-spotter.blogspot.com/

https://aibfamily.flights/airline/Aer-Lingus

https://digitalairliners.com/?s=Aer+Lingus

The last link has the most up to date information on the aircraft, it shows there are now three A321LR for Aer Lingus at various stages of construction. The first, EI-LRA, due in less than a week, is still in a hanger while the second, EI-LRB is now in full colours under tow and the third aircraft, EI-LRC, is on the final assembly line with its tail painted. 

Most flight tests seem to take between 2-3 weeks, the shortest I've seen recently is just 8 days. We're currently 6 days away from the revised delivery date and 2 weeks away from planned entry into service.

kevinandrew wrote: »

Definitely. I could be wrong but various sites and spotter pages have no indication of any test flights taking place, in fact the most recent update from the weekend indicates the aircraft is still in a hanger and has yet to perform under its own power. 

https://xfw-spotter.blogspot.com/

https://aibfamily.flights/airline/Aer-Lingus

https://digitalairliners.com/?s=Aer+Lingus

The last link has the most up to date information on the aircraft, it shows there are now three A321LR for Aer Lingus at various stages of construction. The first, EI-LRA, due in less than a week, is still in a hanger while the second, EI-LRB is now in full colours under tow and the third aircraft, EI-LRC, is on the final assembly line with its tail painted. 

Most flight tests seem to take between 2-3 weeks, the shortest I've seen recently is just 8 days. We're currently 6 days away from the revised delivery date and 2 weeks away from planned entry into service.

It was pushed out again from 23rd,I'd say there won't be much time before it goes into service after it arrives

Locker10a wrote: »

Is it planned to go straight into TAs or is it planned on euro sectors for a few days first

Scheduled to operate to BDL on 2nd August

GM228 wrote: »

Surprised it has not been mentioned yet, but I wonder if the recently discovered "excessive pitch" software issue on the A321neo will have any impact on scheduled deliveries?

It won't, if it were to have an impact the plane would have been grounded with other operators. This is not the same problem as the MAX, intense spotlight in the wake of those incidents has just caused every advisory or notice (particularly those related to aircraft software) to be taken as condemnations of aircraft types by newspapers and ill-informed commentators.

The actual EASA wording is that "excessive" pitch could occur under certain conditions and "during specific manoeuvres". The EASA cautions that this could result in "reduced control" of the aircraft. This is different from the situation with the MAX, it does not imply it is unrecoverable, nor that it would cause any type of accident, just that it's outside of the regular flight envelope of the aircraft.

The A320 series has always been fly-by-wire, unlike the 737, as such any previous issues would also have been fixed by software updates and would have been routine and gone unnoticed by the world at large. MCAS, on the other hand, is an entirely new system that obviously wasn't tested fully, there's a big difference.

marcos_94 wrote: »

I do believe that the "fix" being provided by Airbus is actually around revising its A3201neo flight manuals that would prevent the aircraft from reaching excessive pitch altitudes. So it is not a design flaw patched up by software issue as on the Boeing

Airbus themselves have called it "a temporary revision to A321neo flight manuals" regarding operational limits, to me implying a more permanent fix is on the way, while EASA says the safety measure is an interim action and could be followed by further requirements.