Aer Lingus today (14 January) begins three times-daily flights from Belfast International Airport to Heathrow.
The carrier will codeshare with British Airways (BA) on the route, with flights scheduled to connect with the latter”s network of international services from the London hub.
”We believe our presence on the Belfast-Heathrow route provides great value to the travelling public of Northern Ireland and indeed those living in the surrounding counties,” said Aer Lingus chief executive Dermot Mannion. ”We believe the northern business traveller in particular will benefit from our new service, giving them access not just to London but to the rest of the world through our codeshare arrangement with BA.”
This route comes at the expense of Aer Lingus” Shannon-Heathrow service, which was dropped yesterday after nearly 60 years in operation.
An Aer Lingus spokesman told ABTN: ”It caused understandable reaction in Shannon but ultimately this is the right commercial decision for Aer Llingus. The Heathrow slots are very precious and we looked at Shannon and it has been marginally profitable but we think we can improve on that.”
Ryanair has been extremely critical of the move, saying the Irish government promised the Shannon service would be maintained when it sold Aer Lingus in October 2006.
”The government didn”t do anything to prevent this. Aer Lingus confirmed Shannon was a profitable route - they could have remained there and started a new route from Belfast,” said a Ryanair spokesman. ”This is taking a service away from the mid west region and they”ve let down the people there, both Aer Lingus and the government as a major shareholder. People are losing connectivity into Europe.”
Ryanair has said it will add extra services from Shannon to Gatwick and Stansted and introduce a Luton rotation to ”do its bit to make up for the loss of passenger volume”. A spokesman told ABTN ”We”re going from four to seven daily flights from Shannon to London within the next 30 days.”
Aer Lingus has based three Airbus A320 in Belfast - its first base outside the Republic ”and currently flies three other routes: Amsterdam, Barcelona and Geneva. It will introduce services to Rome, Budapest, Malaga and Faro from 25 February, and to Nice from 1 April.
The Aer Lingus spokesman said they are not worried about competition with other airlines from Belfast ” ”We”ve a low cost operator and have been competing in the Republic with Ryanair for 20 years.”
He also made it plain this Belfast base is a ”template” and will be ”the first of many.”