IAG is moving Aer Lingus transatlantic flights from Shannon to Manchester amid Irish Covid-19 non-essential travel restrictions. The airline secured 1,500 slots at Manchester airport for the summer 2021 season and is expected to base three Airbus A321LR and one A330 for flights to the United States there. Aer Lingus has sought clearance from its shareholders to dispose of a pair of London Heathrow slots to British Airways for “an agreed consideration.”. IAG boss Willie Walsh has offered a ‘cast-iron guarantee’ on Aer Lingus’ Heathrow slots. Updated at 5.05pm IAG CEO WILLIE Walsh has offered a ‘cast-iron, legally binding’ guarantee that Aer Lingus’ flight-slots at Heathrow Airport will remain as they are for at least five years.

It seems that the possibilities of an IAG acquisition of Aer Lingus are increasing as the Irish carrier considers the latest offer of €2.55 a share, valuing the business at about €1.36 billion. Using our schedules and traffic analytics tools we’ve taken a quick glance at what the offer means and the top level elements of any such agreement.

While it’s clearly not all about slots at London Heathrow that is certainly a major part of the logic for IAG from what we can see. Aer Lingus are currently the third largest airline at Heathrow in terms of slots with a 3.3% share of the available pool. Any acquisition would give IAG - or perhaps in this case more appropriately, British Airways - around a 54% share of monthly frequency from the airport; some ten times more share than their nearest competitor, Virgin Atlantic. With no planned capacity increases at Heathrow for sometime, securing a further 3% share of movements for IAG at the proposed price would seem to represent a very smart strategic investment as well as commercial opportunity.

Not surprisingly the current Aer Lingus slot portfolio is evenly distributed throughout the day, with departures from 06:50 through to 22:00 and arrivals from 08:05 through to 21:15. As such there is a very attractive spread of potential timing available from which to explore potential new routes and additional frequencies for BA. Again, as you would expect, Dublin is currently the best-served of the four markets that Aer Lingus operates with 10 frequencies a day; Cork and Belfast have four each and Shannon has the balancing three frequencies.

Should IAG complete the acquisition then the focus will be around how those slots are used; some will undoubtedly still be used for services to Ireland but everyone realises that the real prize is long-haul usage of those slots.

Read the rest of this blog at: http://www.oag.com/OAG-Blog/iag-and-aer-lingus-all-about-slots

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Aer Lingus, Shannon and the Heathrow Slots

August 10, 2007 at 10:30 am11 comments

As has been fairly well shown in the Shannon-Heathrow debacle, the 25% stake the government continues to hold in Aer Lingus is valueless to the population at large. The government either cannot, or doesn’t wish to use it to influence their strategic policy – so, bar comforting the Aer Lingus unions there, why should we keep it?

Rather, what has been shown is that the real issue is not the airline, but rather the slots. While I appreciate there are difficulties with the ownership of slots, and potential changes in Heathrow, what I would propose is that the Irish government seeks to sell its 25% stake in the company back to Aer Lingus – in return for some form of deal which would include ownership of a number of their strategic slots i.e. those at Heathrow. These slots could be continued to be used by Aer Lingus for routes from Ireland, but if they closed down a route those slots could then be rented to other airlines for services from Ireland.

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What puts this issue into further light was that on the radio the other Jeffrey Donaldson suggested that the competitor with Belfast for the Aer Lingus hub was Birmingham. Whatever about giving business north, moving it truly abroad is a different matter. Certainly, something worth considering, and possible a damn sight more useful than having a minority share in the company.

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Casino arizona portal. Further research obviously would be needed, particularly with regard to issues relating to the true ownership of the Heathrow slots and also Brussels competition law, but it is definitely something worth looking at.

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Edit: One of our own, Dan O’Sullivan proposed something similar a year ago. Pity event proven him right. Indeed, Olivia Mitchell was raising concerns about the Heathrow slots and possibly retaining them going back to 2005.

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Entry filed under: Aer Lingus, Air Travel, Author - John Carroll, Brussels, Economics, FG, ireland, Irish politics, Limerick, Mid-West, Semi-State, Shannon Airport.