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

Manchester made a small profit in its first full year. While loads have lagged behind the network average, they’ve been relatively consistent and quite respectable.

As an example, in October it had a 66% load factor, this is in line with the same month last year (67%) despite the fact last year included the BHD-LHR route and they were using the A321LR on MAN-JFK so they’ve managed to maintain load factors even with a large increase in capacity (A333 vs A321) and the removal of BHD-LHR which was included in the CAA numbers for 2022.

BGI continues for a longer season next summer, into May rather than late April, and MCO goes daily little later than previously. JFK remains unchanged, as does the overall network and capacity versus this summer. The big test will be in 2025, if Aer Lingus is serious about the base growing, that will be the year to prove it. Chicago continues to be rumoured and there’s always the possibility BOS gets finally gets launched as originally intended but both would require additional aircraft to be based and that’s a big commitment to make.

Buffalo, Montreal, Quebec....plenty more North American routes to be had within Neo range if the incentives are there. I recall hearing Kansas City were pushing hard with EI pre-COVID, at 3,600 ish NM it might be doable on the XLR, in summer at least. Airbus publish the range for the XLR as 4,700nm but in reality I believe it is expected to be somewhere just shy of 4,000nm Westbound on the NAT depending on configuration.

There is easily a dozen or so destinations that have potential.

i could see YYZ switching to X2 daily on A321NEO, JFK and BOS getting an extra service on A321NEO, MSP will switch to XLR.

That’s 5 frames covered already and then plenty of potential for the likes of PIT, YUL, BNA, DTW, BUF

SFO could justify double daily at some times of the year

Some of those cities would also be very willing to hand over a number of incentives to Aer Lingus, further sweetening the appeal.

I’m sure most people thought Hartford would have relatively low demand but it’s worked. If Aer Lingus is to expand, the cities mentioned are guaranteed to be of interest.

EI would be mad to give up their wide-bodies for slot purposes alone. If anything they could probably do with a few more and not just for beyond the US Mid West but for outside of it as well. As much as it goes against EI's conservative ways Mexico, Brazil and India are places I can think of that could be successful with a route from Dublin but for that to work they'd need more range capable frames.

Wasn't there a decline in numbers for SFO a short while back ? Something about the tech industry had dried up a bit or something along those lines ?

I also think off the top of my head that EI might need another A330 for that to be possible for the summer time. There's only 6 A330s capable of west coast runs at the moment. Four of the newest -300s and two of the -200s DUO and DAA. None of the others have crew rest and with EIs config would be weight restricted. *Open to correction here*

sorry to give more context, Denver was the second largest unserved route from Dublin. Would be interesting to get the top 10 figures... But if number 2 was only 36,000 the numbers for third place cant be substantial, purely on a volume only basis

"I've looked into DUB-LAS. The most recent useful data is from 2019. That year, the market had approximately 73,000 roundtrip point-to-point passengers, making it DUB's largest unserved US market - not bad! It was twice the size of #2, DEN.

And DUB was LAS's largest unserved market in Europe.

I haven't looked at fares though - only traffic. On that basis, it's quite exciting.

Hope it helps,

James."

Not sure how many more flights the infrastructure in T2 will support.

CBP is a cluster for the morning bank.

It is. And the powers that be declined planning permission required to make it better because of problems with the road layout.

Welcome to Ireland.

The JetBlue CEO has said recently the weight increase “…will not be material” but will make them look at weight savings within the cabin.

If Aer Lingus is really going down to a 170 seat count on the XLR (as indicated by the IAG presentation) that’ll be a hefty weight saving already.

Worth noting JetBlue has a more lavish cabin than Aer Lingus in terms of additional fixtures such as their ‘pantry’ cupboard/fridges with snacks and drinks available and a heavy business class seat. As their CEO says, they could do with a diet.

More lavish pantry it is basically a shelf that has bottles of water and crisps on it. Well at least that's what was on it when I flew with them to LHR.

if denver does, a route with double that demand in 2019 and one which would get a lot of feeder traffic, given the handful of airports that fly to it from europe, it could have triple the traffic that Denver gets from Dublin...

Virgin are sending an a350 there from manchester in June, three times a week. and manchester is no european hub to the states....

Agreed, the largest unserved route from north America to Europe and vice verca, is bizarre ... allegedly from a North America hub too non the less. Any way, ill refrain from posting about this again, until we hear an announcement, if ever... but aer lingus talk about North America expansion, what are they taking about, ignoring a 100,000 a year route and focusing on the 15k a year route... it does seem that way...