Dublin Airport Bus Service Changes & Discussion

When Aircoach first launched the Cork route and came under a heavy assault by GoBe and also came under pressure by Dublin Coach on the Belfast route, they launched an exemplary commercial response to defend their position on those routes. Management of the company has changed and it really does show.

It does not surprise me what is happening in Dublin Airport at all. It's what happens when an operator (Aircoach in this case) sits back and allows another commercially savvy operator to do whatever they want without properly defending itself. They've simply watched Dublin Express built a significant ticket agent network in Dublin without any effort to fight that. National Express has a history of building huge ticket desks in prominent places in airports with generic non branded and non coloured signs such as "Bus and Coach information" or "Tickets to Dublin" make it look like a travel advice desk to drum up trade and take it away from their competitors.

Also the situation with the 705X is even more puzzling than with the 700. They've got a successful route between Dublin and Belfast, but they've gutted the frequency of that to chase what surely must be very limited returns on the Derry to Belfast corridor that could only muster enough passengers for a minibus (and that's before they took several stops and one of the airports out) with journey times Derry to Dublin being very uncompetitive. No wonder National Express are trying to start a route up on the corridor, Aircoach have practically given them an open goal to do so and have kindly even provided them spaces in their timetable to fit in!

The fact that COVID hit and made Dublin Bus give up their 747 and 757 prime spots outside departures really bailed out what was a major faux par of going from the best spots at Dublin Airport to being banished to the general bus area with everyone else. If you think how they are second best now, imagine how much worse it would be with another competitor on the scene and them banished to the bus area.

The Galway situation also is curious. It was well known for a while that GoBus and CityLink were attempting a merger and it was obvious for a while that the route was not performing well under Bus Eireann. When Bus Eireann dropped the route that could have essentially made it impossible for the merger to go ahead without any concessions unless an operator picked it up. However by picking the route up, Aircoach essentially paved the way for the merger to go through. I'm not sure that was so smart commercially when you look at how saturated the Dublin to Galway market is by CityLink and their various brands these days and how Aircoach is around the edges. If nobody else was sniffing around the Galway to Dublin license, there is surely an argument that they would have been better off waiting for the CCPC to rule that as the only active operators on the Dublin to Galway corridor, that the newly merged CityLink and GoBus must make concessions by disposing of one of their licenses as that would result in a more even playing field on that corridor than there is right now.

I think the fleet is something that needs improving, certainly but I think right now that's only the biggest issue on the Cork route. The biggest issues on the other routes where there are competitors tend to be around what seems like poor commercial decision making. We will have to see where they put the new Mercedes Tourismos and what kind of spec they are before commenting further. I would hope they do not go down the road of putting them on the Belfast route to try and chase those limited returns on the Derry section further. For me they need to be on the Cork route to help stave off the onslaught which s coming from CityLink in the coming weeks.

By the way, Aircoach paid €2.7m for Airporter. I'll leave everyone to form their own opinion on whether it was worth it or not.

The problem is a lack of drivers though at the end of the day .

In order to put extra runs on those routes they are going to have to take them off other routes where there is more competition. That's about the only commercial thing they've got right lately even if it sucks for passengers. Better to have a timetable that you can deliver across the stable of the routes than have a better timetable where you're cancelling services every day as there is no slack in the system. Reliability of an airprot service is absolutely vital.

Even now they are only really coping thanks to the daily use of hire-ins (with Nolan Coaches, Wexford Bus, Eirebus, Royal Irish Tours and McGills and Kearneys all operating for Aircoach in the last few weeks) and drivers that are being sent over from the UK that are driving the car park and staff shuttles, presumably because that doesn't require route training and local knowledge in the same way that the coach routes would.

Not quite sure Aircoach have helped themselves at times though. They managed to annoy the Airporter staff enough with apparent worse terms and conditions as part of the takeover which has meant that they've increasingly had to cover the 705X route with Dublin based staff as a fair few of the drivers didn't transfer, which meant the increased PVR of the 705X has meant more Dublin drivers being assigned to the route.

Little change to the Aircoach website today.

Free Travel Pass holders can book a seat online now for a £2 fee on the 700/702/703 services. A free travel pass holder will need to enter a valid pass number on the website when booking a ticket in order to do this and show the online booking confirmation and travel pass when boarding.

Booking ahead remains optional however and Free Travel Pass passengers can continue to walk up and access the 700/702/703 services without needing to pay a fee, subject to the coach not being full upon arrival at their stop.

They have been registered as BV72YCD/E/F/G.

I believe they are the 12.295m examples, which if true, means they are the shortest vehicles in the Aircoach fleet.

Sorry. Should have used word coach!

Serious disruption on the Aircoach 700 route today.

They're cancelling the 09:30, 10:00, 11:00, 11:45, 13:00, 13:45, 16:45 17:00 from Leopardstown. The service provided last night was also poor with large gaps of around an hour on airport bound services.

There seems to be a commercial decision made that they are going to prioritize services from the airport over those to the airport recently, I assume because of the close proximity to the competition at the airport means a greater chance of losing customers. Either that or they are simply not advertising these cancellations and are just selling tickets at the airport stop at the kiosk and making people wait it out. 

I see Aircoach are hiring another three middle managers. They seem to be hiring an awful lot lately whilst the number of driving staff available seems to be decreasing even after flying some over from the UK. Some might argue that instead of creating a bloated, First UK like operating company structure despite being a relatively small size, they'd be better off using the €50k+ each being spent on some of those roles to help retain staff.

Shortage of drivers is the issue. They're three full duties down on the 700 at least and I'm not so certain other duties are being operated in full.

I had a friend going for a bus earlier and they couldn't be on despite being booked on the service in question as it was full of people who were booked on earlier buses that had been cancelled. Can't be fun driving on that route at the moment.

The other thing is that daily now they're having to have several drivers in Dublin work the 705X to Derry because of a shortage of drivers in NI. The numbers required has increased since it was extended from Belfast to Derry and not all the Airporter staff came across.

Next few days and weeks are going to be key. If it carries on or gets worse it really calls into question the decision for an operation short on drivers to spend several million by extending the 705X to Derry when perhaps that cash might have been better used to make terms more attractive to get staff to stay.

Yeah, because when you're struggling to staff existing duties to the point the reliability of the service on some of your routes is suffering the most obvious thing to do is to simply add further duties into the mix. That's bound to help isn't it.

Does seem that there are more Dublin based coaches out on the network today.

However according to Bustimes.org it appears that they've got just two NI based coaches operating on the 705X today so far with five Dublin based coaches so far on what is supposed to be a service fully operated by the Northern Ireland arm which obviously then leaves Dublin short, hence cancellations on the 700.

It does seem very much a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The trouble is they have got themselves into this place and it's going to be very hard to get out of it. I don't think any timetable increase can be sanctioned right now until they have the staffing and service reliability of things sorted out.

It's all very well that they may say they will have some more Belfast drivers coming on stream for example, but we all know that over the past while they've had Dublin drivers have to bail the 705X service out on a regular basis as they don't have enough staff there. This business of having to keep robbing Peter to pay Paul on a regular basis needs to stop.

Also cutting back the 700 would be akin to killing it. They can't afford to cut the timetable back because they have a very well resourced competitor who is already heavily out manoeuvring them in the commercial marketplace. If they cut city centre routes back to two an hour whilst their competition are running five or six, then they will never recover from that, but I agree the current scenario isn't much better. Unfortunately Aircoach have walked themselves into this situation and are left with no easy options.

The only tactic I think I'd be looking at if I was thinking of this purely commercially rather than in customers interests, is to only having two services an hour doing the full route, with the rest of the services terminating at the Clayton Hotel on Leeson Street Upper since the rest of the stops don't really have a Dublin Express stop anywhere near. That should result in a reduction of driver requirements without bleeding passengers to the competition. But it would be subject to licensing and is not without risk about what competition might do about extending their routes.

In reality though having got into this mess the best way that Aircoach can navigate out of it is trying to stop the haemorrhaging of drivers leaving and the only way that is going to happen is if they put their hands in their pockets and see it as in investment.

National Express are commercially excellent and they can smell an opportunity on that corridor so this isn't surprising at all. I sense that the opportunity is about to be exploited in a big way.

I would imagine that National Express will have Quinns coach hire on fairly strict contracts with penalties for services that are not operated to make sure that they are right at the top of list when it comes to work performed by Quinns. They'd probably make it attractive for them as well by giving them a good deal and paying a good sum if they do run a full service

There are some in the industry who think that all of this might be part of an elaborate multi-faceted commercial trap being set for Aircoach and this is just as much about the 700 as it is about the 705X. It'll be interesting to see what package they are offering staff and if they start actively trying to recruit Aircoach drivers and what the response would be by Aircoach.

I think this shows what I have thought for a while. National Express are here and they are not going to go anywhere. They are happy to put the resources in and are not unhappy to upset the status quo. And they will not be found wanting when it comes to a battle. The launch of a Belfast route would send out a big statement of intent and everyone in the industry is going to sit up and take notice.

Aircoach are offering 12 pound an hour for new hires so this is well above that.

NX are running rings round them at this point.

The new Levante's have good seats and are a much better coach than the original two versions in my book so they are going to really have the higher specification on the route to be honest.

If Aircoach have gone for 55 seats on their new Mercs as is being reported on the Tapatalk Irish Road Passenger Transport forums and they are indeed the shorter 12.295m model of the Tourismo, there will be no contest when it comes to vehicle standards on this route.