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

I would heavily suspect your flights will be cancelled this week along with others on the west coast. Seem to be promoting east coast - JFK Newark, Boston & Orlando heavily with suspiciously obvious absence of the others.

Crazy that we're a week into October and the US restrictions relaxation date for "early November " has yet to be confirmed. That must be playing havoc with transatlantic flight timetable scheduling!

Maybe it’s only a temporary return for the Christmas peak so don’t want to do the big announcement, particularly if flights are already near full?

A full time return to the west coast would otherwise warrant an announcement of some sort I would have though.

My friend had is SFO flights in February cancelled yesterday. He is now beyond pissed off with EI. He was fine with it up to now as could understand with the US restrictions, but not next February.

This was his second lot of flights cancelled after an EU return was cancelled and messed up over the summer. He's an "EI man" and with the actual flights he did take since the return, they had no alcohol drinks on board by the time the trolley got to him or food worth talking about. Needless to say, EI will be steered clear for him going forward.

I am supposed to be flying direct to Miami from Dublin in December and am yet to hear anything from EI even though the flight has clearly been cancelled. Flights have not been bookable for weeks. And yet they are contacting people who are due to fly elsewhere in February confirming cancellations. The mind boggles...

Perhaps. Good point. What is interesting is that on flyertalk there is a new post today which lists all of the transatlantic cancellations for the next few months. Miami is not mentioned at all. A number of flights have now been cancelled to SFO over Christmas period.

In all honestly I assumed Miami was one of the two route axed indefinitely post-pandemic, the other being Minneapolis.

I was surprised to see it return to the booking engine so early on considering its relative weakness in its early days of operation, it had only really started coming into its own when the pandemic struck.

As for the other “cancellations” being reported elsewhere, it’s a mess and could be so easily avoided if they just kept them off sale instead of loading entire preliminarily schedules and making them available to book when it’s clear they weren’t going to be operated!

Is this down to the ancient IT systems they operate? It seems they load these preliminary schedules which feature pretty much every route on a basic operating schedule and then tweak them at a later date, contacting passengers at an even later date. It’s a recipe for disaster, possibly the quickest way to cause passenger dissatisfaction and tarnish the brand with reliability issues.

If Aer Lingus had kept these flights off sale in the first place, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

Nope, nothing was repainted it seems. In fact most A320 aircraft that were repainted in the new livery are now flying with some form of mismatched engine cowlings, I think only EI-DVL and EI-DVN still have their fully teal engines.

I wonder if they’ll restart the painting schedule this winter or delay it until next year again?

You should get one 6-8 weeks before departure and yes the airline should be handling the situation better. Lynne might get around to addressing it one day.

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On another note looks like Aer Lingus UK will operate on December 25th (westbound to JFK/MCO). I notice this year no eastbound on December 25th as all westbound on the 24th have been cancelled from DUB.

I did wonder if this year might be the one where Ireland caught up with the rest of the world and started offering flights on Christmas Day.

At the risk of being a little flippant, it's not like crew have had a shortage of days off this year.

I asked Dublin Airport about this a few years ago and was told that they ask their airline customers each year if there's desire to operate over Christmas, and make a decision based on that. I had trouble believing it then given their customers included dozens of airlines that did operate....

That would be disappointing if Miami was indefinitrly cancelled. I flew it in 2019 and the plane was full. It seemed mostly non irish as I think a lot of transit passengers used it from Europe. I hope it resumes soon. A handy link if I ever make a trip to South America!

I don't think anyone can make a reliable prediction for demand on the 25th since there have been no flights out of Ireland on that day for as long as anyone can remember. Meanwhile flights operate from more or less everywhere else on this planet....

I've flown several times on the 26th (VIE/HAM/TXL/DUS) and it that was 50% load factor at best, its borderline at best commercially to fly and it really only worked due the TATL connections

I cannot see the 25th working at all, Europe has a very different take on Christmas vs Ireland, far less of a shutdown.

Covid has knocked back any chance of the 25th happening for several years

Very true, start later on Stephen's Day too and do a similar operation on NYE and NYD.