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

There is a privilege hire in this week to operate the 476 on the 6th and 7th I believe!

But is it really? Who outside of some aerosexuals is complaining? Are you or anyone else privy to the correspondence to EI? I am not arguing, generally curious to see who is actually complaining?

A friend of mine working in IT and with no interest in aviation flew to ORD a few weeks ago on the "sorry" plane. He'd found the word on Twitter after, as the crew are constantly apologising to PAX for things that don't work on board. Another chap I know more loosely working in manufacturing is on the road every second week in J class to somewhere, he books his own ticket and gets reimbursed by his employer. He loves the hard product in EI but got stung on one of the terrible twosome a few months ago. He's booking one of the North American carriers whenever he is going to the East Coast now to avoid the risk of a repeat. Also I seem to recall the two aircraft were brought up in the Dail transport committee a few months ago when the CEO was in.

If you look at their Twitter and Facebook pages there's constantly posts about them. I assume Joe/Mary Bloggs is going on to complain that the IFE in their seat wasn't working, seeing other posts and realising the nub of the issue. Also J class passengers are generally a lot more clued in about this stuff, especially those travelling for work. If they got the normal product on one leg and the QR one on the other, but paid roughly the same, they're going to realise.

Padraig Harrington mentioned it recently on a golfing podcast as he had it going to Orlando a couple of times

That alone will have done enough harm to justify removing them from long haul.

Consolidation of routes, for operational reasons they decide that instead of flying a morning and an afternoon flight they will fly once on a bigger plane. The A330 fleet is at capacity, so in order to do this they need to hire in a larger aircraft.

So those 'sub standard' airframes are mentioned by 1 golfer and a few people J pax on twitter. Hardly protests against the airline. I do not mean to be glib about it. I would liken it to when an airline will regularly overbook a flight chancing that not all people will turn up on the day.

If I was flying J, and have experienced that EI product in the past, I would not be happy getting on board and seeing those seats but I suspect until they start seeing a substantial drop in revenue to the point where almost all people travelling change their flight they will do little about it.

Right now, they have 2 aircraft that still manage to fly across the pond every day. Why would they want to change things because a few people complain about it.

Maybe it is a sign of the times in that air travel is so safe and reliable nowadays, and some people are so reliant on electronic means of entertainment, that unreliable inflight entertainment systems can become a major issue in some people's eyes. By my reckoning, between them EI-EIK and 'EIL carry more than 8,000 passengers a week on transatlantic services, and the majority must be occasional rather than regular travellers, so I wonder how many are truly concerned about this issue. I have flown on both aircraft, by the way, and survived the experience unscathed. The aircraft were clean and the flights were on time and uneventful, which for me ticks the important boxes.

I'm guessing the leases must be super favorable on those ex-Qatar birds for EI to be willing to take all the PR flak & EC-261s that come with having them in the fleet?

While I'd like to see reliable Wifi on board Aer Lingus too, I feel duty bound to point out that on-board wi-fi on the middle eastern carriers is so slow as to be effectively useless, and it doesn't seem to have held them back.

I seem to recall that Emirates has less than 1Mbit shared across the entire plane on its A380s.

WiFi is still very much a gimmick on most airlines, it’s nice to have but limited to browsing social media and possibly sending an email. Anything actually worth doing for a business passenger, like sending documents, is almost impossible.

I doubt this is a genuine make or break issue for the majority of passengers, even in business class. It is however an advertised product so passengers absolutely have the right to complain about it not being available, even if it isn’t an integral part of the experience for many.

The truth is, nothing is going to be done about these aircraft this year, this has been clear for months now. I can accept the supply chain issues excuse for this summer, but if this continues into 2024, they’ll deserve the even bigger inevitable backlash.

I would +1 on that. Wifi is almost expected on all American carriers and someone mentioned the poor emirates wifi but in my experience, both EK and QR have excellent wifi. Just not for streaming but at a time when we all need to stay connected its quite good. Speaking of grumbling, a lot of people give out about the Qantas Perth-London flight that has no wifi.

I think most of the mainline US3 domestic fleet has/is converting to viasat satellite wifi? I can tell you from experience anyway its very high quality, I've been able to work easily on transcons.