{"id":169730,"date":"2025-11-08T12:35:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T12:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/169730\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T12:35:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T12:35:08","slug":"manchester-fails-to-live-up-to-aer-lingus-expectations-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/169730\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester fails to live up to Aer Lingus expectations \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">When British Airways owner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/international-airlines-group\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/international-airlines-group\">IAG<\/a> came calling to buy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/aer-lingus\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/aer-lingus\">Aer Lingus<\/a> a decade ago, it quickly became a political football. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">This was understandable given the national pride historically associated with Ireland\u2019s former State airline. The notion of flag carriers is perhaps outdated, yet the likes of BA, KLM in the Netherlands, Lufthansa in Germany and Air France all remain a potent symbol of their countries, even if direct state influence waned years ago. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">One of the big concerns at the time of the takeover centred on the idea that IAG would be able to tweak the Aer Lingus service to suit its needs with little consideration of requirements on the ground in Ireland. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The concern focused on the valuable Aer Lingus slots at Heathrow, and those worries seemed well founded when IAG opened an Aer Lingus base in Manchester, and started a direct service from there to the likes of New York, Barbados and Orlando. IAG appeared willing to sacrifice routes from Ireland to the US at the altar of the wider group\u2019s dynamics. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It doesn\u2019t seem to have quite worked out like that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/business\/2025\/11\/07\/aer-lingus-grows-operating-profit-by-22-to-170m\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Aer Lingus expects air fares to be flat next year despite competition for passengersOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">On Friday, Aer Lingus boss <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/lynne-embleton\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/lynne-embleton\/\">Lynne Embleton<\/a> seemed pessimistic about the Manchester base.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe base is performing lower than elsewhere in Aer Lingus, and Aer Lingus is performing lower than elsewhere in IAG, so it\u2019s not performing at a level that makes it attractive for investment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">There are issues at play beyond the finances of the Manchester hub, of course. Aer Lingus staff based at the UK airport are in dispute with the carrier, with workers set to walk off the job a number of times this month, after a four-day strike in October. About 7,500 passengers are expected to be impacted by the latest round of strikes, if they go ahead. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ms Embleton\u2019s comments could be seen as part of that negotiation as much as anything else. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The fact remains that she has publicly and fairly bluntly come out as being unhappy about the Manchester hub. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When British Airways owner IAG came calling to buy Aer Lingus a decade ago, it quickly became a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[2442,79,2355,18,19,96683,17,96650],"class_list":{"0":"post-169730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-aer-lingus","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-cantillon","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-international-airlines-group","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-lynne-embleton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115514109102953457","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}