Dublin Airport Bus Service Changes & Discussion

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.

Good article on them here with pictures

Absolutely pathetic standard of service on Aircoach this morning. They can't even tweet the right services that are cancelled seemingly.

A colleague went to catch the 10:30am service which didn't turn up. Such is the unreliability of Aircoach right now they simply got a taxi rather than wait as you never really know these days. It didn't appear on tracking either on bustimes.org or on Aircoach.ie.

Looking at the tracking systems it seems that the 10:00am and 12:00pm service which were both supposed to be cancelled actually did run, I assume there was a mistake in the tweet that Aircoach made and they mentioned the wrong departures?

I have to say I know for a fact that Aircoach do want to increase the 702 and 703 timetables but at the moment there simply isn't the staff to do so. What often comes across from a lot of the general public (including those on the forum you mention) is a complete ignorance of the actual employment market as it is now. I see so many people moaning why services are not at pre-pandemic levels and they seem to be oblivious to the staff shortages that are effecting many areas of the economy.

Yes, there has been a switch from Aircoach to focus on the 705X seemingly above all else since thar route has been extended to Derry, but the route that has been suffering because of that is the 700 route which has had duties removed from it to staff the 705X. The issue with the 702/703 frequency is not linked directly to it because even without the extension to Derry they still wouldn't have had the staff to extend it. Unfortunately to add coaches to the 702/703 they're going to have to remove duties elsewhere and it's not obvious where that can be right now.

In relation to the sale of the Tri Axle Volvo Jonckheere coaches, this hasn't made any difference in terms of capacity since the vehicles that have replaced them, whilst being smaller and a lesser specification with less legroom, actually seat pretty much the same number of people. Also towards the end the Jonckheere's were increasingly unreliable, having been used intensively for around a decade 24x7x364. I still think the Panthers they have got since should be nowhere near Intercity routes mind.

The problem is industry wide, but yes, it is effecting some companies more than others.

The new Aircoach Tourismos are starting to enter service today with 24203/24206 seen operating ex Dublin 704x services over the last couple of hours.

In addition a number of eVoRa's have entered service on the blue car park in plain white livery. They feature LED screens inside at the front and behind centre doors and are to First specification inside with brown seats, bright pink handrails and purple flooring.

There are electric articulated vehicles on order to be delivered over the next couple of years to replace these vehicles which will then be sent back to enter service in the UK, minus the centre door and with the luggage racks replaced with seats. They have had these vehicles built to First UK spec because o that and have laid them out in a way that makes it easier to covert them later on.

The idea was that the 11 Mercedes Citaro artics are knackered after 15 years of operation 24 hours a day and were barely able to be kept on the road. Dublin Airport doesn't want diesel vehicles but the appropriate articulated fully electric vehicles (which will be the first of their type in service in Ireland and are something rather special) and the pantographs and other related infrastructure to be put in place at both the airport and the car parks would not be ready until 2025.

Therefore an interim solution was needed and buying new articulated vehicles and then dumping them after two years with no further use of them being likely to be able to be found, simply doesn't make economic sense. Also it makes no sense for say Mercedes to lease new articulated diesel cCitaro vehicles to AIrcoach for two years because they're unlikely to have any takers after that, which would mean basically Mercedes would need to jack the lease price up to cover the whole cost of vehicles over 2 years, which again would make no economic sense for the operator.

Having seem one briefly in the flesh whilst in motion, they certainly look like 12.3m examples. The Panthers these are replacing are 12.6m coaches with 49 seats and a toilet or 53 seats and a toilet. These are at minimum 53 seats with a toilet despite being seemingly 0.3m shorter. The centre mounted toilets might save a bit of space over the rear-mounted one though but anything gained is likely to be lost to a row of extra seats. Therefore it's likely that at best they will be similar to the Panthers they replace.

A centre mounted toilet is never as spacious as a rear mounted one and the placement of the USB sockets where they are, lets be frank, is cheaper than placing them next to the seats as there is less wiring work to be done. Also I notice that there are no curtains (but the Aircoach logo does block some of the windows, so best sit there to block sun?) so I'd hope the windows are well tinted, a full route display at the back is exchanged in favour of a number only. I haven't seen the back of the seats but I wouldn't be surprised if there was no table either.

For comparison, these are the lengths and capacities of other operators using Tourismos and other vehicles:

• Aircoach Tourismo - 12.3m - 53 seats with toilet.
• Dublin Coach Tourismo 13.1m - 49 seats with toilet
• GoBus Tourismo- 13.1m - 53 seats with toilet
• Bernard Kavanagh Tourismo - 13.1m - 53 seats with toilet
• National Express Levante III - 14.3m - 56 seats with toilet
• Citylink Vanhool EX16 - 13.3m - 49 seats with toilet.

Again Aircoach appear to being cent wise and Euro foolish. They must not know that there are people over 6ft in this world. I understand they wanted to get 53 seats in no doubt, but why not go for the 13.1m model and get the same number of seats in and give everyone a better travel experience like all of the other operators have?