Dublin Airport Bus Service Changes & Discussion

Would make sense for Aircoach to split up their services, even in terms of space - I'd say when the 702/703 start back up, the stands they currently have would be a bit tight with 6 different routes using them at the same time

I heard recently that the Evora bus used for the crowne plaza hotel shuttle route on the Swords Road from Dublin Airport has been transferred to do a hotel shuttle route from Edinburgh Airport. What stop did that bus use at Dublin Airport?

Does anyone have hard figures on how much money the operators have to pay to the DAA per year to keep the premium bus stops in place at Dublin Airport?

I'd imagine that if Dublin Bus and other operators were to keep paying fees to the DAA even when those bus stops weren't used for running services when their own Airport routes were closed during the pandemic. It's extremely likely to say right now that Dublin Bus in this scenario had a very limited pot of money to begin with being generated for their commercial services division when they had the tours & Airport routes bringing in their revenue.

When Covid came along in March 2020; that money had dried up for them very quickly which has now resulted in Airlink being closed off for good. It didn't make any financial sense for Dublin Bus to keep paying the huge DAA fees on maintaining the Airlink Bus stops at Dublin Airport when no money was coming in from their customers to support that business in the first place. That's why it became unviable to continue on with it. Before that; they have had to mull over the potential headache of buying new buses to replace the VG's; with the money drying up within their own business model. Dublin Bus management just decided to make the hardest decision possible to their own staff they had to close the service for good.

The private operators in this case don't have a problem in this instance to continue paying these fees to the DAA as they the large financial resources to back it up. If Dublin Bus continued to play this tactic with the private operators if they were low on funds when all of the Covid variant's are dead & buried; they would be seen as playing hard ball with very little gain to show for it in the end. They just couldn't continue within their own head to play these sort of tactics anymore. Dublin Bus had to fold their side of the bargain by scrapping Airlink & let the private operators pick up the slack once the Airport & the country goes back to normality.

But these 2 routes are identical as far as Blackrock, passenger numbers beyond that point would be light even at the best of times.

That's not quite true about no public transport from "south Dublin" - the Aircoach 700 from Leopardstown serving Sandyford and Stillorgan has departures at 04:00 and 04:30 that arrive at the Airport for 04:55 and 05:25.

An 04:55 arrival for a local bus within Dublin for an 06:40 short haul departure would always have been sufficient.

The only reason the airport wanted people there 2 hours beforehand was to get you to spend money there.

90 minutes was always my cut off.

Thats correct as the bus returing to the airport picks up on the quays opposite cardiff lane, in the evening times buses were often stuck on macken st and cardiff lane for an hour or more so the route was altered and after the ballsbridge it goes via mount st, westland row, tara st onto north quays.

Got to the airport at 7.00am for the 9.45am to Newcastle on Tuesday, no real delays getting through.

Used the blue car park for the first time. It was convenient and cheap.

Newcastle airport has a metro attached to it, very useful. £5 to travel within all the zones is good value for the day.

Anybody any idea what passenger numbers are like on the 700/702/703 Aircoach services since they resumed.

That is an odd decision for the 703. Why would Aircoach reroute it through town while it adds an extra 30 minutes at minimum to the route's journey time? Do any of the Dublin Express routes run through O'Connell Street to get to or from the Airport or would they use the port tunnel?

I'd see that Aircoach have put up newer bus pole flags at their stops. I had a look at the new design on Darren Hall's Flickr photostream. The colour of the new flags look nice. However I thought the trend of private bus operators having their own bus poles here would soon become a thing of the past with services being integrated on one bus pole at each stop. Is that process going to become the norm from the NTA soon?

I've taken the 703 3 times since summer. However the other day I took the DART from Dun Laoghaire and then the Dublin Express. Low and behold it was faster than the 703. The route the Aircoach now takes is absolutely ridiculous and I've never seen anyone be picked up along the new route through town. It just gets bogged down in traffic, I will say it is slightly better than the Macken Street farce which took 2 hours once!

A real degradation of the service and no wonder the last time I was it there was only 2 other passengers.

Lost the DL market in the process though.

The whole point of the original route was as a DL-DUB express service. There's now zero point using this service anywhere south of Ballsbridge.

Dart + Dublin Express is faster, more comfortable AND cheaper. No brainer.

The new N8 from Blanchardstown to Clongriffin via the Airport should also be up and running sometime next year hopefully. Will be interesting to see how the two fair.

No they changed the 703 well before Covid, at least 3-4 years ago.

Then drop the price accordingly for the slower, inferior service.