Aer Lingus to reduce Dublin to Heathrow flights, reassess future fleet plans

Irish carrier Aer Lingus has announced it is to reduce frequencies on its flagship Dublin to London Heathrow Airport route during the winter of 2024/25. The carrier is blaming a post-Covid decline in travel on the route and a recovery that has failed to materialize as traffic has been increasing elsewhere across its network.

The plan also comes following a wider reassessment by the company regarding its future fleet deployment plans and capacity requirements with the imminent arrival of new Airbus A321XLR aircraft in its fleet.

The review was largely driven by the passenger cap imposed at Dublin Airport  (DUB) resulting in the airport restricting its annual passenger throughput to 32 million passengers per year under existing planning laws – restrictions that Aer Lingus, Ryanair, and others have been fighting to have reviewed.

The carrier has also been battling with pilot unions for much of the past year in a dispute that has hit its finances and seen flights canceled. The dispute was finally resolved in July when the airline agreed to increase pilots’ pay by 17.75%.

GTS Productions / ShutterstockThe decrease in flights between the Irish capital city and its English counterpart will see an average of two return flights a day dropped from its schedules. Following the cuts, the carrier will operate between nine and ten departures a day between the airports in winter 2024/25 versus the 11 to 12 rotations it operated in winter 2023/24.

For the summer of 2025, the carrier plans to operate between 11 and 12 departures a day from Dublin to Heathrow compared with the 13 to 14 it had during the summer of 2024.

“Aer Lingus is continuing to assess the implications of the financial damage caused by the pilot industrial dispute in the context of the current competitive environment and the passenger cap at Dublin Airport,” said an Aer Lingus spokesperson. “This includes a review of the weaker parts of the airline’s network and its cost base. In that context, Aer Lingus is reducing its Dublin to London Heathrow operation from winter 2024 onwards by approximately two departures per day. This decision was taken because the performance of these services had not recovered post-Covid.”

According to airline sources, business travel on the Dublin to Heathrow route has only recovered to around 75% of where it was before the pandemic. The carrier’s Heathrow flights from Cork, Shannon, and Knock airports will all continue unaffected.

It is understood that the two daily landing and take-off slot pairs that Aer Lingus will no longer use at Heathrow to serve Dublin will now be used by IAG partner airline British Airways which has its main base at the airport.

Elsewhere in the Aer Lingus operation, the carrier will still be taking delivery of the six Airbus A321XLR narrowbodies it has on order, with the first two aircraft due for delivery in November and December 2024 with the remaining four aircraft arriving by September 2025. Given the range and capabilities of the new type, Aer Lingus has previously said that the planes could potentially free up Airbus A330 capacity on US East Coast routes to be deployed elsewhere in its network. 

Markus Mainka / Shutterstock During 2024, Aer Lingus has seen more competition out of Dublin on transatlantic routes from several carriers such as United, Delta, and JetBlue and has been increasing its US destination list in response. In 2024, the airline has commenced new services to Austin, Las Vegas, and Denver.

The company blamed increased competition on North American routes for a fall in profits for the six months to June 30, 2024, to €9 million this year ($9.63m) from €31 million ($33.2m) in the same period in 2023.

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