Dublin Airport Bus Service Changes

Aircoach

It's good to see they have stopped answering reviews with automatically generated responses. They totally ignore them now.

Aircoach appear to be dropping less trips than they were before, but they are still dropping them at peak times with long waits still occurring. Unfortunately cancellations are no longer being posted on social media and the coach tracker is totally gone from the Aircoach website for months now so there is no transparency of cancellations at all for walk up customers. Simply not good enough.

They claim they are listening to customers by changing the rules allowing them to take a later coach in the event of a flight delay up to 24 hours, but in reality they already were allowing customers do that before, even if they didn't specify 24 hours.

They have believed to have placed an order for new coaches for next year, but not sure what.

Dublin Express

I see that Dublin Express are hiring a new project manager to help 'win, chase and manage new bids' which will 'help build the business beyond Dublin Express' which tells you all you need to know about the ambitions for National Express here.

Still have to say I'm not hugely impressed with their customer care though, appears to be very much UK based and that is room for improvement.

Also a bit odd you can buy an open return ticket for their services on NationalExpress.com but not on their own website.

GoBus/CityLink

There are talks ongoing about changes in relation to these new companies that could happen in the new year.

Hasn't been anywhere near that long, it's not always worked very well but it's only been several months.

Citylink / GoBus - Dublin to Galway

The Gobus.ie website has now been closed and is redirected to the new Citylink website which basically appears to present all services as running under the Citylink umbrella. There's a GoBus.ie logo at the top of every page, but realistically everything is pretty much refered to as a Citylink service in Citylink colours and the Gobus name is barley used on the website.

However there is a note that says "Citylink also runs services on the Galway to Dublin City & Airport Express with Gobus" I note that none of the other ex GoBus routes are described like this. They are just refered to as CityLink services.

I guess they are determined to make sure they hang onto both the GoBus and CityLink licenses on the Dublin to Galway express corridor as 'separate companies' despite the fact not only do they accept each others tickets and operate out of the same offices and share a booking engine, Gobus as it's own brand basically doesn't even exist anymore following the latest change. It simply shouldn't be acceptable and the NTA needs to take steps to deal with it.

Dublin Bus Airlink Routes 747 and 757 Set to Return?

As of the end of October, Dublin Bus has been granted two new route license for two routes to Dublin Airport

• 747 from Dublin Airport to Heuston Station
• 757 from Dublin Airport to Dublin Airport (circular loop, route not disclosed)

The previous licenses that Dublin Bus had for these routes had expired and were not renewed, but these two licenses are under new license numbers and therefore are the result of a more recent application.

It has been obvious for some time that driver shortages have meant that the airport is not served as well as it could be in terms of capacity to Dublin City centre and using higher capacity vehicles was always going to be a commercially sensible way of transporting more passengers without needing additional drivers.

I've been hinting this has been a sensible way forward to address capacity issues at the airport for a while. What we are likely to see if Dublin Bus go ahead with these services, is that the 747/757 will undercut the Dublin Express 782/784 by a little, but will have the ability to hover up an extra 15-20 passengers will help reduce the issues that passengers have with waits and not being able to board buses to the airport. The 747/757 could serve as a cheaper, higher capacity competitor to Dublin Express, the same was as it did with Aircoach previously.

There are some unanswered questions though namely

• Is it right that Dublin Bus are potentially starting up new commercial routes at a time where services are being cancelled due to a lack of drivers?
• Where will the services operate from in Dublin Airport? Are the stops that Aircoach have leased from DB or do they have rights to them themselves after DB ceased operating the 747/757 from the same stops?

On the subject of Aircoach, where does this leave the 700? Lets be honest. they're losing the 782/784 Dublin Express services at this point to the city centre. DX offer a more reliable, more frequent and more comfortable service which they have marketed extremely well and built a number of good commercial deals and a substantial ticket agent network. All in all DX have heavily outmanoeuvred them commercially

The strategy that Dublin Bus may be about to pull is one which really, Aircoach should have considered themselves considering the number of passengers I see on social media that are fed up with services being full. Yes it would have involved in a change of name for the 700 service, but the performance of the 747/757 before the pandemic shows that there is an appetite for something between a regular city bus service and a coach service that Dublin Bus exploited for many years with the high capacity 747/757. When drivers are at a premium and not being able to recruit enough means you cannot meet demand by increasing capacity by adding services, going for a higher capacity vehicle is an obvious solution to help tap into that demand without needing extra staff.

But at the end of the day the effect is the same though isn't it?

There will be existing PSO drivers who will apply for the Airlink routes who will move to Airlink, that would otherwise have stayed on PSO routes if Airlink didn't exist, so they'll still be robbing Peter to pay Paul as those drivers will have to be replaced.

The Stansted Airlink vehicles introduced by First in Essex are excellent, having been on one lately.

They are 63 seaters, but have a couple of tables in them (as longer distance than Dublin to Dublin City Centre) as well as single seats on the nearside in the first couple of rows upstairs, so in reality they could be comfortably 69 seaters once you change that. Edinburgh also have some similar vehicles.

I really don't understand why Aircoach didn't go down this road. They already have a spec of vehicle and even a livery and interior design that is not too dissimilar from their own branding colour wise. It would have allowed them to carry 150 passengers extra an hour without needing to recruit any further driving staff and would have made it much harder for a new entrant as there would be less unserved demand and higher customer satisfaction. The simple fact is that if you cannot meet levels of demand by increasing frequency, you need to by increasing capacity. Dublin Bus see this and they have spotted an opportunity, that has been presented to them. Lets make no bones about it, if the airport was adequately serviced by the current operators, DB would not even be thinking of returning to this market. When they left the market it was clear to everyone it was the commercially right thing to do. But now, circumstances are different and the airport is screaming out for more capacity.

What we will likely have now is a reliable Dublin Bus service with high capacity, at a price cheaper than Dublin Express and Aircoach that fills the same market sector that the 747/757 always did, A comprehensive Dublin Express operation running 5-6 times per hour that benefits from first class marketing and commercial strategy with significant network of ticket agents and partnerships and an Aircoach operation that has lost it's way and gained a reputation for being unreliable.