Wow. Cash offer of 1.4bn euros. Seems a strange move and hard to see how they will be allowed to control near 100% of Irish capacity?

Edit: reading the statement O'Liary says the combined group would compete on the "European and world stage" so it seems he wants to go long-haul! Though the two companies would, he says, be run separately (for the time being until the competition authorities forget why they objected to him, I suspect......)

Blimey, this could get interesting... No wonder they left OW!

Already aquired 16% of stock offer at �2.80 -

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.

God, I hope not. I guess he's fed up with any regulation at all from IAA, so intends to buy up Irish aviation, to run it his way

I wouldn't feel too sorry for the staff at Aer Fungus. They all got a slew of free shares in the sell off, and indeed have been receiving shares in the company for years beforehand

That airline was run by the unions for years ! Finally the Irish government has the neck to sell it off and make it someone else's problem.

Whether this proposed takeover is to the benefit of the Irish air traveller is questionable though

O'leary has just been on RTE radio talking about this.
He was asked if he could work with a unionised workforce in EI and said he would because if the plan goes ahead that they would still be run as 2 seperate companies.
He wants to buy the staff shares worth �60,000 per worker which hesays should be tempting to them and he wants the Irish government share but will be happy wit just more than 50%.
Ryan airare already entitled to a board seat owning the 16% but hesays they wont be taking this up.

The offer is conditional on them getting above 50%.

So will be the feeder services from DUB to LHR become BA flight numbers, operated by FR?

What about feeling sorry for us poor passengers.

It�s easy for all those based in the UK to say it�s a good thing that EI are leaving OW. But consider for a moment that for those of us who originate our travels here in Ireland, that EI is really the only realistic way of getting to LHR so that we can connect with BA, VS or whoever. With the complete destruction of EI as a real airline, it looks like that we will no longer be able to interline baggage to an onward carrier at LHR. They (EI) have already reduced their interline agreements substantially, with BA thankfully being one of the few remaining airlines, for the moment.

Also we won�t be able to have our BA BP�s issued at DUB or ORK. So we could end up having to claim baggage at T1 then trek over to T3 or T4 & check-in all over again, adding hours to our connection times, in an already stressed Heathrow !!! In some case it may necessitate having to fly out to London the evening before if our onward flight is an early departure out of LHR. This will not only add substantially to the hassle of our travels, but add in the extortionist cost of LHR hotels to our budget.

The same would apply for a return journey. So after arriving in from a long haul flight in the wee hours of the morning, we could be faced with dragging ourselves & our bags back to T1 to check in with EI again.

Then of course there would be the consideration of baggage allowances. The Club World allowance is considerably more than EI�s, which is fine at the moment as EI honour the CW allowances, when a booking is made with BA & they are only providing the feeder flights. But what will happen when these agreements cease ??

There we�ll be having paid thousands for a CW flight, but will have to pay EI to have our bags brought to & from LHR.

It�s obvious that EI want only point to point traffic, but what does the future hold for connecting passengers ??? Or those who don�t want to fly with EI across the Atlantic, in their over priced, vastly inferior, so called premier cabin. Instead preferring to pay way less for a superior product such as BA�s WTP or CW !!

I really feel the outlook is very bleak for those of us stuck here on this island, with our only option of getting off, lying with LCC�s who don�t give a hoot about passenger convenience or service.

I fear for my future travels & the hassle, inconvenience & stress that�s going to foisted on me.

Those of you in the UK, who see EI as a pimple on the backside of OW & don�t rely on them to get you to LHR so you can travel the world with BA, please consider us here in Ireland for a moment & rest easy in knowledge that it�s not going to affect you, like it�s going affect us.

If this is the case, BA will gladly add capacity on LHR-DUB and take over all the disgruntled EI/FR passengers that can't interline. It's a free market, so nobody is stopping BA from flying to DUB.

SmilingBoy.

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.

That's exactly what FR will be saying. However, what will BA say when they get asked about the financial liklihood of them restarting LHR-DUB? If they make it clear that they're not likely to do this then that will blow this argument out of the water. Don't forget that EI are already pretty much an LCC on the DUB-LHR run and you can already only interline with a single through ticket.

Of course MOL may well decide to retain EI as a separate entity - if there's money for him in things like interlining through LHR then you can bet he'll keep it. Also, with a long haul operation to run and connecting passengers from the UK and elsewhere to recruit you may well see the ability to through-check baggage being made available even on certain FR flights.

LH, AF, etc. Maybe not the choice you want, but certainly a choice.

The market may be free. But the slots at LHR aren't. LHR and DUB point-to-point is low-yield. The connecting market isn;t great either other than in CW and F. And, the real killer - better to use the slot sending a 747 to India or wherever.

If MOL does that it would, IMHO, be a huge mistake. FR is probably the most ruthless airline in the world when it comes to controlling costs and having a 'simple' operation. Taking bags off a plane and distributing them to a dozen different planes is a hell of a difference from their current approach of dumplign them all on a single belt.

FR are absloutly brilliant at what they are trying to do (at least looking at it from an FR perspective, I accept that pax would frequently not apply the phrase 'absloutly brilliant' to FR) and tinkering with things and complicating things will do nothing for them whatsoever.

Overall - interesting times ahead. We've already had the Irish government and the EI unions coming out against it. If it does go through, I predict things will get explosive. Let's not forget the last carrier FR took over (Buzz) - the negotiations were getting a bit tough so MOL shut them down for a month. I'm not sure whether they are still around, but if they are, they are indistinguishable from FR.

I think it was discussed a few moons back the possibility of BA taking over EI but everyone concluded that it would only be for the LHR slots which would then be enhanced from shorthaul (DUB) to longhaul.

At last 2 airlines that reflect the true value of OW