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

Sure - and I've stood at the tap-in barriers at Gatwick station waiting for 0931 many a time to get Thameslink to Blackfriars for that lovely offpeak fare, straight into the city with only East Croydon , London Bridge as stops. Cheaper and far less stops than the now crowded Elizabeth line

But yes, as I said above, Heathrow is useful in the minority of my cases - Slough and Reading so yes it matters where you want to go, but for the vast majority of my London destinations, Gatwick wins every time, been delayed too many times at City .

There must have been hilarious reactions at FR HQ. Not one single reason has been advanced by EI for this.

DUO went to Bordeaux this morning for maintenance.

Is there any reason why it used EI 992 callsign?

I thought all 330 maintenance call signs are designated EI2505.

The historical flight number system dates from the 1960's (flights to France, Spain are 5xx), last digit, even numbers east bound, odd, west bound

For non revenue positioning it should be 99x

2XXX is normally an additional service to top of the schedule, so you see these around sporting events, the XXX is the normal format flight number

1XXX is a rescheduled flight where the original was deferred for some reasons

4XXX are charter operations

Tranfers to Virgin are 0 since 2020, cause Virgin pulled the entire base. That has to have had an impact; I remember them having buses to pick up at the bottom of the steps due to how many were on the early out on Saturdays.

They were at 5 a day at one point in the past, from memory. Some rotations had been on-and-off, e.g. the late Saturday, for years and years.

They had a micro-base at Gatwick at one point, operating various routes to Spain primarily.

The only thing I can think of is IAG towers wanting to keep fortress LHR slots for some reason and having to give up the EI LGW slots to make it look like a trade ( silly I know )

I really hope Easyjet give it a go its an absolute no brainer for them to get into Dublin

Easy have never operated to DUB. They served Cork and Knock for a while though IIRC.

I'm not so sure, on the Dublin side all slots are allocated by DAA who have to approve same, If I was easyjet on the phone I'd be asking why can't we fly those slots , five or six slot pairs at each end isn't chickenfeed and the traffic's there to be flown.

If EasyJet wanted slots they will get them. They could offer a decent schedule like EI did. FR scheduling to the UK is chaotic over the last few years and lost all consistency.

DAA have said they would like another major carrier to reduce the leverage EI/FR.

This is EI we are talking about though.

Ei due heading to Manchester today is this to cover a heavy maintenance on one of the uk a330

I don’t think that’s right with regard to Dublin.

Airports don’t dictate where airlines fly - the airlines decide that.

The exception to that was the former British Midland domestic slots at LHR which had to be used for domestic flights as part of the approval of the BA takeover.