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

EC-MAJ A332 of Wamos positioning to DUB this morning to operate for EI.

At 5'8... Not worth it... There's plenty of room on all seats... (I'm 5'7 and a sore ass is all I get). Grab one on the flight day, as close to the front so you can to get on/off quicker... But not so close that you're near the walk through galley (teapot melodies/those 'mall walker' people that walk in circles the entire flight/babies in cardboard boxes and meerkat kids)... Around the purple area is my sweet spot.

Never thought of it that way. I shall take that advice.

With edy gone back to Manchester and on the new York flight today what happens to lrh is there another route planned from Manchester

I suspect JetBlue will get ahead on MAN-BOS before Aer Lingus, they’ve already expressed their interest in MAN (and DUB of course) and with Aer Lingus short on long range narrow bodies until at least late 2024, they’ll miss the opportunity.

I actually think they’ve taken a slightly wrong approach to the MAN base this year but the fleet requirements at DUB forced their hand. After a relatively strong performance at MAN in 2022, growth really should have followed with the long awaited launch of BOS. Unfortunately for MAN, the incentives being thrown at them for DUB-CLE were too good to ignore which meant taking away the MAN based A321 and replacing it with an A330, fine for JFK in the summer but will be useless in winter.

There is a lot of potential at Manchester for Aer Lingus; Virgin Atlantic are uninterested, TUI has its own market to look after and the US carriers have been slow to return. Aer Lingus has shown promise but the fleet is simply too small and too difficult to juggle between bases and AOCs for them to achieve any meaningful growth in the near term.

I’d be cautious on MAN’s overall potential. MON, TCX both relied heavily on it for their long haul ops and went bust, the US3 all massively rolled back in the last decade, VIR almost went under, BAW all but abandoned it, the Canadian presence is a shadow of what it was 20 years ago. The ME3 and others heading East have done very well there but for whatever reason the Westbound market has imploded. EI might be able to turn the tide given their cost base is much lower than the competition, especially on the Neo, but it has not been the potential bonanza one would expect from a region with a population that large in recent times.

Ei-fng diverted to KEF. Ei-daa still stuck in YYZ also.

Yeah unfortunately. Yesterdays EI105 to JFK was also cancelled according to FR24.

could this fit into my argument that EI haven’t got a comfortable number of planes for them to base 2 of them at MAN and instead should focus on DUB?

The Trent 7000 on the neos are dogshit. Plagued with FADEC,Fuel Pump and HMU issues

Considering Aer Lingus has ran into these fleet problems every summer for the past decade, scrapping Manchester would simply mean stretching the fleet to max from Dublin instead, as they have done for years.

It’s a fleet strategy they’ve stuck with despite repeated issues, it would take a complete change in culture at the airline for them to consider scrapping Manchester (or anything else) simply to have a bit of fleet flexibility.

It’s clear that management are happy to accept the cancellations, reputation damage, short term lease costs etc. in exchange for a maxed out fleet raking the summer profits.

If it wasn’t Manchester it would be somewhere else.

There's a new improvement coming for the leap that addresses the hot/sandy conditions it suffers most from, but the CFM56 it replaces has a phenomenal on-wing time - gonna be hard to get there on the leap... Time will tell I guess.

It's use on the LR, with lower daily take-offs/landings, should (I assume) keep it on-wing on this model moreso than the euro-fleet neos. Plus it's designed for multiple daily flight cycles so the LRs engines should be pretty reliable.