You Give me Aer Lingus, I give you Shannon-Heathrow

Lot of mergers have happened in Europe since. Air France-KLM, Lufthansa-Austrian-Swiss, talk of British teaming up with Iberia or Qantas, so it's only a matter of time before Aer Lingus a re sold off or merged. The Alitalia experience has shaken the European Commission into re-assessing how it sees the aviation sector evolve, and bigger merged entities seem the way to go. In these times of almost crippling national despair, at least one Irish industry has a chance to become one of Europe's biggest. I'd imagine O'Leary would turn Aer Lingus into a well run, efficient airline which will most likely become a low-fare transatlantic operator. Given that Shannon is now opening a US Border post the likelihood of EU-US transit services at the airport has great potential. One which the current AL management would rather ignore as it pursues its own agenda.

I have no problem with O'Leary and find Ryanair services as good as anything AL had when they flew from here to London. What gets me is the media inspired snobbery that surrounds Ryanair. (i.e. the bullshit about smelling the rashers as soon as you stepped on the Jolly Green Shamrock).

The Ryanair fleet is more modern than Aer Lingus'. As for value for money, when did Mannion or his predecessors ever offer anything like the fares or indeed destinations that Ryanair does from Shannon? Yet he can't give away the flights from Belfast - btw, a flight to Heathrow from Aldergrove recently carried all of 12 passengers.

And why the government are hanging on to a 25% share in a company. They never exercise it, so why not take a cash offer. Or have they too much money?

So good luck to O'Leary.

anti-comp... i think in this climate with banks merging, getting govt money, major airlines from different countries merging the anti competition rules are out the window, there has been alot of precedence set that ryainair can reference in their favour.

Was this not rejected out of hand by the powers that be in Europe at the last attempt? Anti-competition and all that

How many jobs did O'Leary promise the last time he 'came to Shannon'?

How many did he deliver?

People really need to read beyond the headlines.

Well done O'Leary!! It might create a few jobs in the Mid-West. I hope it goes ahead and brings back the Heathrow slot to Shannon!

He has my vote, but he had my vote when he tried to take over them 2 years ago too, Ryanair are one of the best things to ever happen to the airline industry, we all know how aer lingus robbed the country blind when they had a monopoly.

I wonder, if we will see AerLingus as the long haul arm of RyanAir and if O'Leary might use the Aer Lingus slots into other European airports to compete for long haul business.

Say for example AerLingus has slots in Frankfurt, RyanAir will continue to fly to Hahn to service the Irish desire to get to the region (I know it's 2 hours on a bus but bare with me) but they would then use some of the AL Frankfurt slots to offer a transatlantic service out of Frankfurt.

Well done to O'Leary

That should be a done deal. Government should be in the business of building and controlling infrastructure (e.g. Rail tracks, roads, phone lines). In the modern world critical air routes like the Heathrow slots fall into that category. Then they should open up the use of that infrastructure to private industry to compete for customer business.

When Aer Lingus moved the heathrow slots out of the republic it was like someone taking over the Dublin Port Tunnel the Jack Lynch Tunnel and the new Shannon Tunnel and then announcing that they were stripping the equipment, staff, lights, computers etc out of the Shannon tunnel closing it down and moving to a new tunnel in Birmingham where they believed they could make more money.

This is an excellent proposal from Michael O'Leary. Love him or loath him, he is one of the most clever business minds out there, and does a mighty job in making money for his shareholders as well as allowing the likes of you and me to get away on the cheap. Noel Dempsey and the rest of the government would be very foolish if they reject this offer.

I sincerely hope that this offer is accepted by the government.

I think this will go ahead. Govt need cash, Aer Lingus havent a hope of surviving as a stand alone op, no-one else will touch them with MOL owning 30% of them...

Could be very good for Shannon..use the Ryanair brand to feed customers into (aer Lingus) transatlantic flights from both Shannon and Dublin and make use of the Customs and border facilities...then fly into AL current US destinations, interline with Jet Blue or use cheap airports that will be treated as domestic destinations from Shannon or Dublin. I think its pretty clear thats what this is about...t/a for ryanair (but do it under the Aer Lingus brand) and feed European customers into hubs at Shannon and Dublin. The customs and border post is not something that the Americans are going to put in every European country and is a massive massive plus to an airport like Shannon