Virgin and Go apply for Dublin and Stansted flight routes

Two low-fares airlines, Go and Virgin Express, have made applications to operate flights between Dublin and London Stansted.

The move comes just two weeks after Aer Lingus abandoned the route.

A spokesman for Go, the low fares British Airways subsidiary, said the decision to apply for landing "slots" at the airports did not mean a decision had been made to operate the route.

The allocation of the slots left the possibility open.

Go had made similar applications to 30 airports around Europe, he said.

A spokeswoman for Virgin Express had no comment to make on the application.

A convention where landing slots at airports around the globe are assigned is currently taking place in Montreal, Canada.

It is understood the two low-fares airlines have applied for the rights to operated three return flights a day between Dublin and Stansted.

Ryanair is currently the only airline operating the Dublin-Stansted route.

It operates 16 flights daily each way and has said it will add several flights in response to the decision by Aer Lingus to abandon the route.

Last week, Ryanair's financial controller, Mr Howard Millar, said it wanted to "block off" anyone else moving on to the route by increasing the number of flights operated by Ryanair.

The company believes the route has not reached saturation and that low fares will encourage people to increase the frequency with which they fly to London, as well as abandoning the use of ferries.

The decision by Aer Lingus to abandon the Dublin-Stansted route led to criticism that it was opting out of competition with Ryanair as part of a new strategy of concentrating on the more expensive end of the leisure class market, as well as on the business class market.

Virgin Express has been flying out of Shannon since last year and also has a multi-lingual reservations centre in Shannon.

The chairman of the Virgin Group, Mr Richard Branson, has said his airline would fly out of Dublin if Ryanair was ever to scale down its operations there.

As well as flying from Shannon to London, Virgin Express begins a Shannon-Brussels service next month.

Brussels is a hub from which Virgin Express flies to several other destinations.

In September, Go announced that it had made losses of £20 million sterling (€32 million) in the 17 months from its establishment to March 1999.

The company hopes to be in profit by year three.

Go was introduced with a £25 million investment fund from British Airways.