Aer Lingus has been growing their US route network significantly the past few years, in a steady but consistent way:
- In May 2018 Aer Lingus is adding flights to Seattle
- In March 2018 Aer Lingus is adding flights to Philadelphia
- In September Aer Lingus added flights to Miami
- In 2016 Aer Lingus added flights to Los Angeles, Hartford, and Newark
- In 2015 Aer Lingus added frequencies to New York and San Francisco, and added a new route to Washington Dulles
- In 2014 Aer Lingus added flights to Toronto and San Francisco
The airline presently has a longhaul fleet consisting of 12 A330s and four 757s (which they’re leasing). In the short term I figured the airline was nearly maxed out on expansion. They do have two more A330s joining their fleet this year, and they’ll also be taking delivery of some A321LRs in 2019, which should really help them with their transatlantic route network at that point (they can use those almost exclusively between Ireland and the East Coast, opening up their A330s to operate longer flights).
It sounds like we might see some more growth from Aer Lingus in the short term. Irish Central reports that Aer Lingus will shortly be announcing flights between Dublin and Denver. While no timeline has been announced yet, my guess is that this route would launch in summer. This isn’t the first rumor I’ve heard about this route, and I’m inclined to believe this will happen.
Since this flight would cover a distance of ~4,400 miles, it would have to be flown by an A330, which features Aer Lingus’ excellent staggered business class.
There’s another reason that Denver is an interesting choice for Aer Lingus. Aer Lingus is owned by IAG, which is also the parent company of British Airways, Iberia, LEVEL, and Vueling. Despite that, Aer Lingus has no plans to join the oneworld alliance, and quite to the contrary, Aer Lingus has a partnership with United, allowing MileagePlus members to earn and redeem miles on Aer Lingus flights.
Not only is Denver a large market in and of itself, but Aer Lingus potentially has quite a bit of connectivity there thanks to United. If this route does come to fruition, it should be possible to redeem British Airways Executive Club and United MileagePlus miles for the flight.
Do you think Aer Lingus will launch flights to Denver? What other US cities would you like to see them fly to?
Honestly Aer Lingus let's add some flights to Denver
I would love if this happened. It looks like they chose Minneapolis instead. So disappointed
Yes we need flight from Denver to Dublin!.
Why not Vegas? Larger marker for the Irish - no?
AreaBoarding
US airlines use 757's across the Atlantic as well
No fun, I'd agree, but not unusual
How is a 757 a "longhaul" aeroplane?
I would be ecstatic about this if it's true. Would make a cheaper option for AA/BA miles from Denver to Europe than British airways.
Honestly I think British Airways is good. If you have Alaska Airlines Miles u can use those with BA too.
Edelweiss is starting seasonal flights to ZRH this June and DY is starting flights to CDG in April. An article from the Denver Business Journal the other week stated Norwegian Air wants to explore adding BCN or MAD next year and of course EI seems to be in the pipeline. At this rate the only major hole in the EU network is AMS.
More routes to Europe are nice but what DEN really needs is...
Edelweiss is starting seasonal flights to ZRH this June and DY is starting flights to CDG in April. An article from the Denver Business Journal the other week stated Norwegian Air wants to explore adding BCN or MAD next year and of course EI seems to be in the pipeline. At this rate the only major hole in the EU network is AMS.
More routes to Europe are nice but what DEN really needs is more flights to Asia and an ME3 carrier as UA is milking its DEN-NRT for all its worth (Y tickets go as high as $2000)
I'd love to see more international expansion out of Denver. Air Canada, Aeromexico, British Airways, Lufthansa, and Icelandair have all flown here for a while, and Norwegian, WOW, and now Aer Lingus have/could add new destinations. Not to mention United's Tokyo route that launched a number of years ago and the Heathrow route that they will (have?) launch. Hopefully we see a Sea-Tac type expansion happen in DEN in the coming years.
Denver has so few international routes that direct flights are massively overpriced. I welcome this. Also, iirc, Chase added Aer Lingus as transfer partner late last year, which is double great.
Great news. Hopefully Swiss or Turkish will be next!
I've been waiting on Lingus space to open up for a while from the east coast... the last few winter's they seem to have made a bunch of space open in Biz like AA does, right now the early summer seems to be a deadzone.
Ok....I wouldn’t really mind taking Aer lingus now...... I don’t like Qatar Airways (and specially AKBAR AL-BAKER...he is batshit crazy) and I hate OneWorld!
Would be interesting if they started flights to DTW or MSP,otherwise SkyTeams (especially DL) influence there is too much.It's hard to get on a non-stop flight from mainland Europe to any of those 2,except Lufthansa flies once to DTW on daily basis. I hate SkyTeam and rather see a BA or Iberia or Swiss/Austrian launching flights to DTW/MSP. Wouldn't mind Aer Lingus flying there too.