Aer Lingus Fleet/ Routes Discussion Pt 2 (ALL possible routes included)

I would expect more A320neo deliveries in the medium term for fleet renewal. The EI-DEx series of A320ceo’s are between 20 and 21 years old now. It would also be great to see some growth on the short-haul side to compliment the success of the transatlantic expansion. Of course, any growth of A320neo fleet will be on the premise that the Dublin Airport passenger cap and movement restrictions are satisfactorily resolved.

IIRC the VLG Neos are P&W powered so wouldn't think so for those at least.

In relation to this the new seats are a massive step backwards on the new 320s, very obvious cheap ironing boards won out.

IIRC they're worse on NSA & NSB than subsequent deliveries due them being last minute, opportunistic acquisitions?

The first three or four deliveries are fitted with the IAG standard, NSA and NSB were reconfigured to match a year or so ago. It's the basic slim line seat from Recaro that IAG had purchased for its narrowbody fleets quite a few years ago. The same seat can be seen on Vueling, Iberia, Level and the majority of British Airways' A320 fleet.

Recaro very recently discontinued this seat and has moved to an updated version, it features a wider support, slightly resculpted structure and minor improvements to the seat back including eye level charging ports and a notch in the tray table to stand personal devices on. This is what features on Aer Lingus' more recently deliveries like EI-NSE onwards.

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Personally the seat doesn't bother me, maybe I'm used to flying on these slimline seats in Europe. Swiss & Lufthansa have had them for 15+ years in verious iterations. Aer Lingus had become a bit of a exception with their old school cabins to be honest and it looks like they'll be around for many more years anyway as they all received a refresh in the past 18 months.

Aer Lingus is already at a disadvantage with the majority of their short haul fleet, at 174 seats it's at the lower end and many rivals have long densified their cabins to remain competitive. By comparison, Ryanair will soon be flying 220+ seat 737-10s and the likes of Wizz and Easyjet already have substantial fleets of almost 240 seat A321neos, even so called flag carriers like TAP, Lufthansa, Swiss, KLM, IB and BA have denser cabins.

Me and the Missis flew to ACE on the NEO back around Feb 2024 for an extra €160 we got the biz class seats up front. It was well worth it as we only had about 1 hours sleep from the night before after being at the Depeche Mode concert.

EI-XLU is due into DUB at 19:00 tomorrow evening as EI2395.