Aer Lingus Fleet/Routes Discussion

Only 8 Aer Lingus craft in the air, 5 going to China or coming back, and 3 TATL flights to the East Coast.

How do Aer Lingus get around the entry bans for Irish and other citizens entering USA and Canada for the teansatlantic flights?

Normally the crews would overnight there but now do the return crew travel as pax on theoutbound and the outbound crew just pax home on the return?

neris wrote: »

How easy or difficult from a beauracy & red tape point of view is it for AL to have arranged those flights or will they have been in planning for a while? Also do the crew need to do anything as it's not a regular route from them

Russia and China didn't sign the Chicago accord so overflights require agreement, its bureaucratic and political. Thankfully Ireland is well placed to negotiate (Aeroflot has access to Dublin and Aer Lingus & Aer Rianta actually partnered with Aeroflot for a time in 80's) so you would expect a degree of understanding, but normally these things take months, years to sort out.

Russia and China have a non standard quasi metic RSVM level system, not the same in Russia and China so you need to carry a cheat sheet to translate the numbers. So if someone barks an altitude in meters in less than great english, you have to do the conversion, crosscheck and turn and pull the altitude selector.

You need to work out diversion airports (not many options across Russia) need someone to handle you at Beijing, fuel etc. EI sent out 2 engineers and a load master to manage a lot of the ground ops.

Need visas etc, the Chinese waived the fees and issued same day to approx 90 EI staff. Joe Soap doesn't get that. The Ambassador really helped in pulling strings to get the visa's get the overflight permission, landing slots etc.

And no-one will know what Shamrock means so its EIN with ATC

I imagine the A330 sim is running a of approaches to PEK this week..

Noxegon wrote: »

I've been thinking about this - are visas actually necessary for the crew given that they are not crossing the border in Beijing?

Maybe it's a requirement in case the aircraft goes tech there and they have to then enter the country..?

are visas actually necessary for the crew given that they are not crossing the border in Beijing?

For China, Russia and USA, the answer is YES.

but normally these things take months, years to sort out.

I think that you are talking about bi-lateral air agreements rather than overflight permits, standard overflight permits can be set up rather rapidly, hours rather than days.

The encounter FLIGHT LEVELS are in METERS, the approaches are in FEET.

Qprmeath wrote: »

No Dublin bound flights tomorrow afaik.

But further flights over the weekend - that's the plan so no alarm needed.

So is this a case of Russia dragging their feet with regards to overfly rights? Typical Russian bureaucracy if it’s the case. Especially disappointing as these are flights to deliver essential health equipment. I doubt the same issues would happen if the roles were reversed.

Only showing 1 outbound tomorrow now.

goingnowhere wrote: »

Only showing 1 outbound tomorrow now.

Where do you get this info? Sounds like a cool resource to have.

goingnowhere wrote: »

No secret the Aer Lingus website will tell all

Problem is that Beijing is not on their list of cities so to find the flights you need to type in each flight number individually.

One of today's Beijing flights not far from landing

Yup

EI9018 and EI9020 are showing now

Anyone know what will now happen to EI-EIN and -EIK put into storage?

California Dreamer wrote: »

I would think the the 300k that EI are charging the government for each flight will well cover that!

Where did you get this information and figure from?

Are you not mixing up the repatriation flight that cost 300k?