Aer Lingus and bmi scrap over Belfast – Heathrow route
23.09.08
Aer Lingus and bmi are involved in a spat over the battle for market share on the Belfast to Heathrow route, the Belfast Telegraph reports. Last week Aer Lingus highlighted Civil Aviation Authority data which showed it had secured a 41.75% share of the traffic in August — despite having just 30% of the capacity.
However Brenda Morgan, sales manager for bmi in Northern Ireland, hit back, accusing Aer Lingus of ‘distorting the market’ by giving away seats for free. She told the newspaper that the Irish airline had included Belfast in its free seats offers, which started on August 1. All told, Aer Lingus put 250,000 seats on its routes from Ireland to Britain on the market for free, with passengers being required to pay just the taxes and charges.
Ms Morgan said: ‘If you give away seats for free, then clearly any airline will be able to fill its seats. This is a case of Aer Lingus buying market share. In fact, if you look at the first seven months of this year, Aer Lingus’ share of the Belfast to London market works out at just 31%.'
‘At bmi we are maintaining our current timetable of eight flights a day, giving passengers a wide choice of departure times, while Aer Lingus is proposing to reduce its capacity by cutting back from four flights to three a day this winter on its Heathrow service.’
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