Aer Lingus will open its first long-haul route across the United States next summer after being granted permission to open a nonstop Dublin to Los Angeles service.
The service, which will start at Shannon, will fly via Dublin to Los Angeles in a specially adapted Airbus. Aer Lingus also plans to link up with a Pacific carrier to provide direct services to Australia using the new Los Angeles gateway.
The route will increase the airline's presence in America dramatically, the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Ms O'Rourke said yesterday.
Ms O'Rourke said she had received a proposal this week from the Aer Lingus board to start the new service. "The outlook is very promising."
An Aer Lingus spokesman confirmed the new route but said "details have still to be worked out".
The airline has ordered an Airbus 330 with only 270 seats to allow greater fuel capacity, thus enabling the non-stop flight. A second Airbus is on order for 2000, which will make it possible to increase the frequency of flights.
The decision to open the Los Angeles route transforms Aer Lingus's presence on the North Atlantic. Once a loss-maker, the route is now solidly profitable. In the past five years, Aer Lingus has seen passenger numbers grow by 70 per cent. Last year numbers were up 17 per cent.
It is these figures which have given Ms O'Rourke confidence to support the airline's plans. An earlier plan to serve the west coast was expensively aborted and two specially bought Boeing 767s ended up stored and unused in the Arizona desert. This almost brought the North Atlantic operation to an end with the airline only serving New York and Boston. Now it serves those two cities as well of Newark, New Jersey, and Chicago.
Aer Lingus's rights to serve Los Angeles under the bilateral air agreement between Ireland and the United States were never relinquished, so it does not have to negotiate with the US Department of Transportation to fly to the west coast.
Aer Lingus is expected to negotiate with carriers who serve Australia out of Los Angeles to offer a Dublin-Sydney service over Honolulu as an alternative to the usual routing over London.
Aer Lingus is also likely to have negotiations with the unions over the introduction of what will become the longest route in its system, affecting pilots' flying hours and cabin crew rosters.