Originally Posted by
chongcao
It could be Flybe to get volunteers.
But to sell ticket at £0 return was for years. Aer Lingus advertised on Metro and Evening Standard for at least two years sometime between 2009-2012 (can not remember, but I do recall it was a long campaign). Of course you have to pay tax and charges.
You're confusing Aer Lingus with Ryanair, who has,
several times in the past, run "free seats" offers - sometimes with fees, taxes, and charges, sometimes without.
Aer Lingus has, to my knowledge, never sold seats without taxes, fees and charges. So a £0/€0 fare would be impossible on Aer Lingus, even if the base fare was set at zero.
Originally Posted by
chongcao
I seems to remember such practise (volunteers to sit in plane) was mentioned in Evening Standard commentary piece some years ago (possible 2010, 2011?). Can not find it online now. But I am 85% sure the author said it was Aer Lingus did that in order to keep Heathrow slot thus not to cause ghost flight situation (as BMed and BMI was heavily criticised in 2007/2008 for ghost flight). If not I apologise. But before I can find that article again, please allow me to insist that my memory was correct.
You're confusing Aer Lingus with FlyBE. As stated upstream, they hired actors on a number of flights to meet the target they had agreed with Norwich Airport in order to receive a subsidy for opening the new route between Norwich and Dublin, and to avoid a penalty for failing to deliver as promised.
Budget airline Flybe advertised for actors to fly between Norwich and Dublin to boost passenger numbers and avoid a £280,000 commercial penalty.
Aer Lingus has never, to my knowledge, operated "ghost flights" for slot-sitting purposes. They use all their allocated slots (they did transfer some to BA last year) and actually bid for the slots that eventually went to Virgin back in 2012.
The assumption is that notwithstanding Mr Walsh's arguments, Britain's Competition Commission will make IAG sell some of the bmi slots, which therefore could present an opportunity for another airline to strengthen its position at Heathrow. Aer Lingus, for one, says it is interested. The Irish airline presently leases some of its slots there and wants to increase the share that it owns. It would also use the slots to cash in on what it says is a surprisingly strong demand from businesspeople to fly between Britain and Ireland (north and south). And of course if it could lay on more flights from Heathrow, it could feed more passengers into its transatlantic flights via Dublin and Shannon.