Dublin Airport Bus Service Changes & Discussion

Talk about a potential increase of services in Spring.

It's worth noting though that both Aircoach and Dublin Express have added extra services in the past couple of months or so to their routes, but of course they're not up to normal frequency yet.

DUBLIN EXPRESS EXTEND OPERATING HOURS FROM AIRPORT ON ROUTE 782.

Dublin Express have also announced three additional departures with effect of this week

• 23:35 ex Dublin Airport
• 00:05 ex Dublin Airprot
• 00:35 ex Dublin Airport

NEW DUBLIN EXPRESS ROUTE 784 FROM FRIDAY 8TH APRIL 2022

The route will serve many of the stops that the Dublin Bus Airlink 757 used to serve.

• 3 Arena (East Wall Road)
• North Wall Quay (Docklands)
• Eden Quay (O'Connell Street)
• Trinity College (Hawkins Street)
• Pearse Station (Westland Row)
• Merrion Square North
• Charlotte Way (For Harcourt LUAS and Camden Street)

Further details expected to be released in the coming days.

I've had a look at the proposed timetable and it's very noticeable that between the 782 and the 784 services they will have a service leaving Dublin Airport every 15 minutes during the hours when both are operating.

It seems to be

• xx:05 / xx:35 ex T1 for the existing route 782
• xx:20 / xx:50 ex T1 for the new route 784.

Not a great start for the expanded Dublin Express and Aircoach services this weekend.

Dublin Express

Dublin Express website only allows you to book tickets from the airport and not from the city centre and even then the booking page seems to hang when calculating the total price after selecting your journeys.

Their new route as well for a return booking seems to suggest that each leg is £4.66 each way, which is a bit of an odd amount. Even if you add it together it's still strange at £9.32 and looks suspiciously like a sterling price that has been converted.

Edit: on nationalexpress.com they are showing up as £4 each way so probably they have been set in Sterling. How many of their own staff do Dublin Express actually have in Ireland? Are the operational staff all contractors and most things ran from UK?

Aircoach

Meanwhile Aircoach have a shortage of drivers so have already cancelled a couple of services today and six already for tomorrow. With that being the case and them advertising for drivers, I can't see any increase in frequency on the 702/703 in the next few weeks like some were hoping for.

They've also rather incredibly decided to only open their customer services avenues on weekdays right now also, which for an airport service provider, is quite incredible and not really in line with quality customer services.

Aircoach had staff at the airport and at Cork and some Dublin stops.

By customer service I meant via phone and email as well as social media.

Aircoach are due to make an announcement about their services next week. Not sure exactly what it is, but perhaps it is the announcement of acceptance of LEAP Cards on the service, as I know they've been working on it with Ticketer for a little while.

Yeah, I was thinking it might be the Leap announcement as the MD has recently spoken that they were hoping to go live with it for the summer, but it seems it was something else.

Latest on an expanded schedule of the 702/703 is they are hopeful to do so later in the summer. There's the belief that if they were to add any more runs to the current schedule, based on current staffing availability, they'd be risking the reliability of all routes operated by Dublin based staff.

Better to have a reliable airport service less often than a service that misses random trips. I know it's not good news for people on those routes, but there is only a finite amount of resources and it's better to have a less often dependable service than one that is in theory much more regular but is unreliable and making people miss flights.

All operators are seeing the effect of this situation due to shortages and COVID, Dublin Bus and Go-Ahead also, and it's a large part of why the BusConnects changes are being pushed back also as there simply isn't the driver availability to operate the extra services.

Confirmation that the service will be operated by Michael Corduff t/a Corduff Travel under service number 769.

No launch date as of yet.

Dublin Express service expansion - Additional Departures on Route 784

According to the Dublin Express booking engine, route 784 will have expanded operating hours from next week resulting in a further 5 services in each direction every day with services starting earlier and finishing later.

• Additional Monday to Sunday services departing Harcourt LUAS at 07:30, 08:45, 19:35, 20:05 and 20:30.
• Additional Monday to Sunday services departing Dublin Airport T1 at 06:50, 07:50, 18:50, 19:20 and 19:50.

In addition they are still advertising for drivers to expand their service, so I wouldn't be surprised to see further increases.

Aircoach service expansion latest

Aircoach have confirmed that they are currently looking to expand services in the next month or so. They are still openly advertising for drivers and it's believed this is the hold-up.

You can find further details here on what they offer, they also allow you to WhatsApp them to discuss it

Note that Dublin Express doesn't currently directly employ drivers, since the coach services themselves are operated by Bernard Kavanagh and Son, who at this point have to be the top coach contractors in this country.

Just as a note, with effect of 1st July 2022, JJ Kavanagh service 737 Naas – Dublin City/Dublin Airport is being suspended until further notice, officially due to low passenger numbers, but you wonder if staffing plays a part as well.

I also wouldn't hold out much hope of Aircoach starting any extra services in the next few weeks as originally hoped, they've had to cancel a handful number of services the last couple of days due to lack of staff and not being able to get hire-ins to cover so to extend services right now would be a bad move.

According to this tweet, the Dublin Coach service between Dundrum and the airport is operating again.

However the Dublin Coach website says the service is still suspended!

Am I missing something?