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

Anybody know what's happening DUB- BRU in Sept? Booked on evening flight on 23rd out and got email saying flight cancelled and rebooked to mid-day, which I could work around. Email today saying all flights on that day, and indeed other days are now cancelled.

Is this type of schedule change common? I would have thought BRU would be a busy route even in current times

The schedule is all over the place at the moment, another raft of cancellations from September onwards was released a few days ago.

Brussels appears to be 5 weekly between 13 September and 10 October with the morning EI630 only operating on Sat and Mon while the afternoon EI638 operates on Sun, Thu, Fri with no flights at all on Tue and Wed.

Aer Lingus is clearly struggling on short haul, lower demand heading into winter is of course to be expected but the airline seems to be bottom of the pile in terms of recovery.

TA forward bookings on BOS, ORD, JFK, IAD are positive (this with the fact EU citizens haven’t been given the greenlight to enter yet) which is giving increased confidence in terms of LH cap deployment.

Sun routes are doing well overall with the capacity on offer, but I don’t think a lot of posters are factoring in that Business travel in Europe is literally dead at the moment. Work from home is still in effect generally and critical travel is only occurring. Lots of routes rely on this AMS, BRU, CDG, ZRH I could go on. There is simply no other option but to operate minimally to feed TA and demand being received or not operate at all (FRA, ZRH).

This was never going to be a snap back the longer it dragged on and there are many factors that will hinder European ops, but with TA recovery this will begin to help matters. EI would be foolish to send off 320s daily to European capitals with LFs below 50%, they need to ensure they are focusing on two things:

Break even and deploy demand where warranted.

It’s painful, it’s slow, but it’s better then pushing cash burn up sending empty aircraft around Europe. For the staff this is the correct direction to be able to give some degree of certainty to recover wages which they have given every intention of when possible.

I remind myself of the fact that only 8 weeks ago, EI was operating at circa 10% and is now closing in on 50% of 2019 levels. That is significant and I’ve no doubt I’ll reflect on this post again in another few weeks.

The route continues as 4 weekly, the previous daily schedule is block added by the booking system. Constantly trying to gauge demand before correcting to what’s warranted. All TAs are currently operating with high loads in both cabins.

If this is EI, the flight change is more than 2hrs so you can rebook onto another flight as per t&c of the change, it's usually in the email somewhere. Give them a call and they'll sort it out

Maybe it was an exception, but when I flew to ORD last Thursday there were only about six seats occupied in Business.

Personally I think that putting flights on sale, allowing them to be booked, and then cancelling them risks alienating customers at the very moment that airlines are pleading for them to return.

My brother is based in the UK, and has had his LHR-DUB flights for September (BA rather than EI, but the point holds) moved multiple times at this stage.

Dublin to Washington EI117 resumed today on the A321NEOLR EI-LRB

14 days out is lockdown, baring a government order or ban the flight will operate as to cancel results in a major EC261 payout

I could give you today's figures from the 123 and they'd be anecdotal as well, it’s the trends I'm more interested in and, they are positive at this point in time.

This is the key thing for me.

As a passenger, I really don't give a flying (pun intended) about whether a flight is going to be profitable or not.

I've looked at a published schedule and I've planned around it, and having done that I really don't want to have to reshuffle all my arrangements around.

As the world returns to normal my preference will be to book with airlines that don't cancel large portions of their operation.

Don't misunderstand me; I understand the problem, and I'm sympathetic to it – but it's not mine.

DUB-LGW returned this morning.

Today also saw the 2nd daily JFK flight now EI107

Today there was 5 TA flights in total

A330 ORD,JFK and BOS

A321NEOLR JFK and IAD

Great to see some extra transatlantic flights hopefully this continues.