Airline's decision to drop routes 'temporary'
Aer Lingus' commercial director yesterday stressed that the airline's decision to axe five routes from Belfast to the continent this winter is a temporary measure.
Enda Corneille gave the assurance as it emerged that Aer Lingus is to drop its services from Belfast International Airport (BIA) to Paris, Rome, Milan, Faro and Barcelona in October.
While the airline currently operates nine routes from BIA, these will be reduced to serve London Heathrow, Malaga, Munich, Lanzarote and Tenerife, which is being added for next winter.
In addition, the number of Aer Lingus aircraft operating out of BIA will be reduced from three to two for four months until the beginning of March 2010.
Mr Corneille said the difficult economic environment had reduced passenger demand and as such the airline had to cut back on capacity and scale down its winter schedule.
“At a time when customer confidence is at an all-time low and you have finite resources, you have to deploy them where they will generate the most return.
“The demand profile in the winter is different to the summer. The environment is markedly worse this year than it was last year.
“We have taken out a number of the city break destinations for the winter – but the sun destinations over the season are still going strong.
“At the same time, in the summer, places like Milan, Paris and Rome are very popular for inbound passengers, carrying tourists wanting a holiday in Northern Ireland.’’
Mr Corneille said Aer Lingus was still totally committed to its Belfast operation – the Irish airline’s first UK regional hub, which was established in December 2007 – and that the jobs of 100 pilots and cabin staff employed at the base were safe.
“We are still huge believers in the base. What we are doing is a temporary reduction for four months which will allow us to better match the route portfolio with the winter demand.
“Far from signalling a retreat from the base, this is protecting the base for the future by ensuring we have the right amount of capacity to match the demand.
“Once we get past the winter in March, we are back up to full steam.
“Also, our aircraft maintenance is now done in France instead of Ireland and the maintenance schedule is totally different.
“It means we are not going to have as many aircraft to fly in the winter as we had last year so we have taken a decision to take an aircraft out of Belfast and also out of Dublin for four months.
“This will allow us to fulfill the maintenance requirements and also to recalibrate the schedule in light of reduced demand.
“Our plan is that on March 1 we will return to three aircraft in Belfast and go back up to the full complement of routes.’’
Aer Lingus will this week carry its millionth passenger through Belfast – well ahead of schedule, said Mr Corneille.
“In our first year we carried 750,000 passengers and our target was 500,000, so we have been successful in generating volume,” he said.
“We are still ahead of target – so we are delighted with the performance of our Belfast base.”
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Weather for Belfast
Tuesday 14 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 6 C to 9 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
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Temperature: 5 C to 10 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North west
