Originally Posted by sdsearch

Yes, a few years ago AA went through a bunch of self-searching to try to figure out if and how and when to serve Ireland exactly. They used to fly BOS-SNN on a 757 (a regular domestic 757, sold as all coach but elites could reserve seats in the normally-F section!), while flying ORD-DUB on a 763. Then they changed it to a single ORD-DUB-SNN-ORD round-robin flight on a 763. Then they dumped SNN once Open Skies happened (and the requirement that all airlines that fly to Ireland fly at least 25% of their flights to SNN went poof), and then they couldn't make up their mind as to just how seasonal they wented ORD-DUB to be. (I don't know if that's stabilized or not.)

So it all depends when you want to fly to Ireland. If you want to fly "in season" then it's not as much of an issue. If you want to fly in "far fringe shoulder season" then it's more of an issue, because that's where the schedule is most iffy far out.

I've thought about flying into SNN but don't want to rent a car and not sure about transportation from there. We did stay 3 nights at the Sheraton in Athlone. Rail was handy to Galway and other routes just to check out the country. The Sheraton in Athlone had cash and points. Quiet little town but I would stay there again. The castle was closed for restoration when we were there but the pubs were open!

We didn't realize that we were flying in " far fringe shoulder season". We knew it was off season because we flew using 40,000 pts!
(So far I've flown to Ireland twice, but only to SNN so far. And the last time, I was on the second-to-last flight back from SNN that AA ever did! The was the ORD-DUB-SNN roundrobin...)