Good access is the key to growth from any market, and it has long been held that a step change in visitor numbers from the US would only be achieved with the advent of Open Skies.
That era arrives fully on March 31st. Of course it would have been better if the introduction coincided with a healthy US economy, a strong dollar and moderate oil prices. But that is not to be in the first full year of Open Skies, nonetheless the access possibilities from the US have never been better.
Aer Lingus were the first airline to exploit the Open Skies era with new non-stop services from San Francisco, Washington DC and Orlando. This is in addition to their existing non-stop services from Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. When you add in Continental’s service from Newark, US Air from Philadelphia and Delta from Atlanta, it means that Ireland is in the happy position of having non-stop service from 10 US gateways, by far the most services ever.
But it gets even better than that, with the Aer Lingus confirmation of its partnership with Jet Blue Airways. This now allows US customers to book a single low fare reservation to Ireland from more than 40 US destinations connecting through Jet Blue’s home base at JFK, New York to Aer Lingus services to Shannon and Dublin.
This opens up a host of major metropolitan areas in the US to an easy to use booking process on Jet Blue’s website which transfers travellers seamlessly to Aer Lingus to complete the booking. These “new” cities include Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Richmond, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, New Orleans, Heuston, Austin, Tucson, Phoenix, Denver, San Diego, Seattle and many more.
Jet Blue Airways is a New York based low-cost carrier founded in 1999 by David Neeleman and a number of former colleagues from Southwest Airlines. It now serves 53 cities with 550 daily flights, and one of its noteworthy objectives is to “bring humanity back to air travel”. Although JFK is its home base, Jet Blue also serves New York’s 2 other main airports, Newark and La Guardia.
It’s a good partnership for Aer Lingus and for Irish tourism. Of course it offers Irish travellers too easier connections to many US cities and Caribbean destinations. It will be possible to book online through the Aer Lingus website from April 3rd.
March 11th 2008
Irish Tourist Industry Confederation
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on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 5:36 pm and is filed under General, Prem Group Ireland.
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