Originally Posted by Radioman
Oh dear, I wonder if this has been the plan all along. I feel sorry for the staff at Aer Lingus, god help them.
As for Ryanair buying up Aer Lingus, I wonder if the EU commission will get involved in it at all?
Well thats even worse now for my Dublin travels if this deal goes thru.
The European Commission will be able to review the deal as long as both airlines generate at least one third of their revenues outside Ireland. Looks likely to me.
The clever bit from MOL's perspective is that the authorities are primarily concerned with (i) slots and (ii) competition on a particular route (which must be point to point if looking at business travel, with hubs being examined for leisure travel). Most EU countries have pretty good passenger numbers data (that's what happens to all those passenger surveys you see being done at airports by the CAA). Looking at slots, the only place with an issue is Dublin. As long as MOL is happy to give away most of Ryanair's slots there and other airlines are happy to grab them (essentially for free) then he may even be able to solve this problem.
EI's international operations barely overlap with FR for business travellers (at least based on past cases FR will be able to argue that STN and LTN do not compete fully with LHR) and on other routes FR primarily targets smaller airports.
It'll be fascinating (from my sad, geeky perspective) to watch the review process if MOL manages to pull this off.