On 1 January 2021, a new open sky agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States comes into force. It replaces the existing Open Sky agreement between the European Union and the United States, which until now has included the British. Aer Lingus, the Irish national carrier, is seizing this opportunity and plans to strengthen its presence in North America in 2021.
L'North Atlantic is a strategic Aer Lingus routein 2019 almost 1.5 million seats to the United States and Canada. The North American continent will therefore continue to be at the heart of the company's expansion over the coming year. Two major developments are reinforcing this strategy.
On 21 December, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) finally granted theantitrust immunity for Aer Lingus within the transatlantic joint venture of the alliance Oneworld. This joint venture already includes the carriers American Airlines, British Airways, OpenSkies, Iberia and Finnair.
Aer Lingus will be integrated into the network planning, pricing and sales activities. The arrival of Aer Lingus will enable the JV to increase capacity on certain routes and inaugurate new routes. Oneworld should thus further strengthen its grip on the Europe/United States axis..
The joint venture should also pave the way for the Aer Lingus readmitted to the Oneworld alliance. The company decided to leave the latter after its restructuring in 2006.
Transatlantic hub in Manchester
Especially as Aer Lingus has just announced that it is also positioning itself for departures from the UK. It has just created a UK subsidiary, Aer Lingus UK. It has even announced that it is ready to launch three transatlantic routes for the 2021 summer season from Manchester airport.
Aer Lingus hopes to receive approval from the UK and US authorities for its subsidiary in Q1 2021. This would enable it to launch a daily flight on Manchester-New York JFK and to Bostona route not operated from Manchester. It is also expected to offer four to seven weekly flights to Orlando.
The flights would be commercially operated under the Aer Lingus brand with EI code. This is the airline's usual IATA code. The choice of Manchester is justified by the enormous potential of this British airport, the largest outside London in terms of passenger volume.
In 2019, Manchester had recorded 29.5 million passengers. . today, Virgin Atlantic serves the United States with flights to Atlanta, New York, Orlando and Los Angeles in summer. A Singapore-Manchester-Houston route has been temporarily suspended by Singapore Airlines. At the end of September 2020, Manchester had recorded a 90% drop in passenger traffic.
The aircraft deployed on these lines would be a mix of Airbus A330-300s and Airbus A321LRs. The former will be transferred from their base in Dublin. The latter will enter service next February and March.
Aer Lingus is still planning to launch a new route between Dublin and Canadathis time to Montréal. The covid pandemic had prevented the inauguration of this line, scheduled for summer 2020.
