Eoghan Corry Talks Travel – May 2024
Turbulent times, Flash Sales and Viva Las Vegas – Eoghan Corry has the latest travel talking points.
The one we have all be waiting for is here – a new route to Las Vegas from Dublin with Aer Lingus, starting just in time for the October mid term break. While this will excite many of us wishing to travel Stateside, Eoghan Corry asks why are the American’s not coming to Ireland this summer? Find out why and lots more in this month’s travel talking points.
Gambling on Vegas
What do you do with your spare A330 in winter? Play the slots, of course. Aer Lingus have talked about a Las Vegas route for many years. The three-times weekly route that they plan this winter is scheduled to run unto April. But why stop then?
Summer does not matter in Vegas, where it gets hot but everyone stays indoors anyway. The demand is already there, if the 52,000 Irish who travelled indirect in 2023 are anything to go by. The problem is that Aer Lingus are fully deployed at the moment and do not have spare aircraft to continue through summer 2025.
Like all gamblers, it gives them options if one of their seasonal routes like Miami does not work out or the A321XLR arrives, to take over current A330 routes like Minneapolis. That depends on the roulette wheel of aircraft groundings, deliveries and the particularly wobbly issue of trade union talks.
Iberia has been given the status of A321XLR launch customer because talks with pilots union IALPA did not reach agreement in time. Aviation is one big casino in the sky.
Where are the Americans?
Ireland’s hoteliers were gung-ho about summer 2024 until a few weeks ago. This has cooled dramatically as the empty beds of May turned into the empty beds of August, revenue managers began to moan and hoteliers have become more hung-go.
It was eminently predictable that this would happen. Down the decades, as long as elections have been held in the USA, American tourists have been slow to travel abroad. The higher spending, longer staying yanks saved our summer in 2023, and with Germany sluggish, France slow to return and Britain in a post-Brexit tailspin, the mighty dollar has never been needed so badly.
The upside? Some of us might get to take a summer break in an Irish hotel for less than the cost of a nuclear submarine. We might even stay in the Trump resort.
Read: 15 Family Hotel deals in August – 2 Night Stays from €300
Remember flash sales?
Flash sale season (yes, it has been a while) shows just how badly Ryanair have miscalculated their summer prices. Three sales have popped into inboxes into the past three weeks, offering reduced fares between now and end June, showing the market needs a bit more stimulus than anyone expected.
No one is able to explain why the anticipated demand was so far short of what they thought in the control room in Swords. Maybe the answer is simpler than expected. Maybe it’s because the prices loaded in the system last autumn were too high? Never.
May you live in turbulent times
Turbulence has replaced emissions as the phrase of the summer in aviation as IATA lines up for its big talk-in in Dubai, with Glasnevin’s own Willie Walsh conducting the choir. After a great year for aviation safety, turbulence emerged, as it does, unexpectedly.
While it may offer a distraction away from the circular and highly emotional emissions debate, and the procession of meaningless stats about SAF and stacks, it raises questions as to how seriously we have been treating turbulence.
The first reaction is likely to be more restrictions and bad news for passengers. Out of the trauma of SQ321 over Myanmar we can expect stricter regulations about the wearing of seatbelts on flights, and greater discomfort on flights. It is astonishing how little we know about the major cause of inflight injuries. While every other worrysome detail in aviation was micro-examined and processed and subjected to exacting standards, turbulence was allowed to keep shaking away in the background like a backstage percussionist. And then someone died.
Summer of starts
What is the real price we are paying for the 32m cap on passenger traffic in Dublin airport? Not as high as initially thought, in summer 2024 at least, as the number of new routes got back to the pre-pandemic average.
Jetblue managed to arrive with direct Boston and New York services, Westjet got Toronto Pearson up and running, Aer Lingus added two trans-Atlantic routes to Denver and Minneapolis, as well as Catania, Dalaman and Heraklion, Delta added Minneaplois direct and daily, Emerald got going to Rennes, Ryanair restored some of the 16 routes they famously withdrew in during their tussle over two euro last autumn and added Olbio, Westjet are starting Halifax on June 19 and even the anticipated direct flights to Ankara from Pegasus were delivered (belatedly, they start July 3). The Europa soccer final between Leverkusen and Atalanta even managed sixty extra flights transporting fans to Dublin for the match.
It was a good result from a scrappy and uncertain summer and an often emotional debate about why we need an airport in the first place. On the downside, our Shanghai flights went to Manchester instead of Dublin and three other long haul operators have reportedly gone elsewhere. A major low cost airline also turned their attention, although whether they were scared away by the cap or the wrath of Ryanair is debatable.
The next chapter is what will happen summer 2025 when the real damage could be done unless the Olympic scale buck-passing on the part of politicians comes to an end. Dublin’s seaport is not burdened with the task of being docked in a four-year planning process to organise how containers of cornflakes get landed. Why run the country’s leading airport like it was a troublesome takeaway in a residential suburb?
Eoghan Corry is Ireland’s leading travel commentator and aviation specialist in Ireland, as well as being a historian, author and broadcaster. He has extensively travelled as a travel journalist and has been a speaker and moderator at tourism and aviation conferences including the World Tourism Forum, Tourism Ireland and Thailand Tourism.
