Aer Lingus to operate VS's shorthaul network as wet lease
 

Aer Lingus and Virgin Atlantic have announced a “wet lease” agreement under which the Irish flag carrier will operate a number of short haul routes on behalf of Virgin.

In a statement to the Irish Stock Exchange, Aer Lingus said the proposed agreement was for a three year period beginning at the end of March.

Aer Lingus is to provide four Airbus A320-200 aircraft to be used for services connecting London Heathrow, Manchester, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The aircraft will fly in Virgin colours.


http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...breaking8.html

~ANd which routes are EI giving up to service the new VS domestic runs?~

A good question. As over 40% of Aer Lingus' fleet is leased, perhaps they will lease some new frames specifically for the Virgin contract (it would make sense, perhaps, as they would have to convert whatever frames are chosen to the Virgin livery). Or maybe they already have new planes due to join the fleet before the Virgin service starts.

The "loss" of 4 airframes for 3 years might be too big an impact to their own network (though perhaps they could spare one or two frames and reduce frequencies as well as/instead of dropping routes).

Of course, if Ryanair gets control of Aer Lingus in January (though the EC is expected to block their proposed takeover), or if some other purchaser comes forward (Ryanair have indicated they are likely to offload their shareholding should they be refused; the Irish government has recently engaged an agent to investigate the offloading of their own share; Etihad have indicated a willingness to increase their stake in the New Year) then there could be major changes afoot at Aer Lingus next year.

~Mmmm. Well my Gatwick- Dublin flights have previously been on A320 aircraft, I note that my easter flight is on an A319.... so perhaps EI are having a change around..........

There are many reasons that an aircraft type can be changed - it doesn't necessarily mean it's due to the Virgin announcement.

Besides, the Irish Times suggests they're sourcing new airframes for the Virgin deal:

It is understood Aer Lingus will source additional aircraft to service the routes, bringing its short-haul portfolio up to 40 aircraft.

The EI website currently lists 37 short-haul planes in the fleet (the two A319s are the newest, both having entered service in March of this year). So perhaps one plane from the current fleet will be used.

Unless there were routes that they wanted to cut anyway, it would seem to be bad business sense to pull planes from the existing network to cover this new commitment. Presumably Virgin bears all or most of the "risk", so EI can afford to lease new planes to fulfil the deal. Why didn't Virgin do that themselves? Because they have no crew certified for operating, or maintaining, shorthaul planes.

So do we think that Virgin will get these four A320s reconfigured, or just go with the standard 174 seats ?
Block middle seats at the front for connecting and other J passengers??

I doubt there will be seat blocking or J, as BA don't offer it domestically. AFAIK the product is due to be one class. A Virginised cabin interior? Most likely.

Or VX lends a few A2S to EI, since they are not doing so well in the US ;): win-win for both: the Virgin group makes good use of airframes*, but doesn't need to train crew since EI will operate them.

*VX still has 60 A320 on order with Airbus

I'm in the process of booking a flight from EDI to LHR, and I've come across a Virgin Atlantic flight operated by Aer Lingus. I take it that this is one of the "wet lease" flights.

What's perplexing to me is that you cannot book this flight on Aer Lingus's website (only on VS). That's a odd sort of codeshare. Anyone know why that is?

Because it is not a codeshare but a wet lease: proving the aircraft and crew but for all intends and purposes it a VS flight (even in VS colours).

Thanks. BTW, why is the lease wet? Is that because it's with the Irish?

Ahem :mad:

Wet Lease

That's the look my mother of Irish ancestry would give me for that line.

But seriously, I was curious about the word origin, not the definition. Looking at the definitions of wet and dry leases, I cannot infer why the terms wet and dry are used. My best guess is that something wet dries out over a relatively short time, hence wet is used to designate the shorter lease.

You've not come across damp leases, either, then? :D

I thnk, like so many terms in aviation, it come from old nautical origins. I THINK a wet lease was a ship lease that included Fuel, a dry lease didn't. These days there are so many variants of
wet-lease (the whole she-bang, +/- fuel),
damp-lease (generally supplied without cabin crew),
dry lease (nothing)
ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance, insurance)
Franchise
Code-share

Does anyone remember the BD operated wet-lease flights to various German airports for LH? They were marketed by LH, were treated as LH flights for marketing purposes, operated by BD AND had a four digit BD code-share on top. So BD were effectively code-sharing with themselves. There was no "true" BD flight number for these flights that could be used for booking purposes. Confused?