Aer Lingus looks set to operate short-haul services on behalf of another carrier next year, according to a report by The Daily Business Post, the online arm of The Sunday Business Post.
As flagged up on our forum today, the report quotes CEO Christoph Mueller as saying that “We are one of the three carriers in Europe making money on short-haul and that has been observed and now people are asking us whether we can operate on their behalf”.
There is speculation that Aer Lingus may operate the new flights on behalf of Virgin Atlantic, which recently announced it had won the right to operate short-haul services from Heathrow as part of the slots freed up by the sale of Bmi to BA’s parent company IAG (see online news November 19).
It had been reported that Virgin originally beat Aer Lingus to the slots, so if this latest news is true it represents a convenient tie-up between the two carriers.
There has also been speculation that Virgin might wet lease aircraft from Lithuanian charter carrier Avion Express (see online news November 22).
Visit aerlingus.com.
Report by Mark Caswell
