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Aer Lingus launches flights to …. Cleveland?

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Aer Lingus has announced a new route to the United States, and it won’t be one you expected.

The airline will be flying from Dublin to Cleveland, Ohio from 19th May.

There will be four flights per week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) using an A321LR aircraft. This is a single aisle aircraft which is adapted for long haul flying, and is the same type as I reviewed here when I flew Aer Lingus to New York in July.

Cleveland – with a population of just 400,000 – is an odd choice, especially as Aer Lingus has yet to restart flights to pre-covid destinations such as Minneapolis. You can visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame whilst you’re there, of course.

As Mrs Merton would say, ‘Why did you want to fly to that home of very generous Government grants, Cleveland?’.

Routes Online reports that Aer Lingus will receive an incentive package of $600,000 over a three-year period for operating the service. A partnership comprising Jobs Ohio, the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Greater Cleveland Partnership, Team NEO, and Destination Cleveland will provide a further $2.4 million. Divide $3 million over three years by four flights per week and that’s a handy $5,000 per return trip.

It is arguably good value for a city which has no existing flights to Europe, a factor which undoubtedly hinders inward investment. The last transatlantic carriers to fly there were Icelandair and WOW Air, which both flew to the not hugely convenient hub of Reykjavik in 2018. Continental flew from Cleveland to London in the early 2000s.

Avios availability seems to be good including in Business Class if you’ve wanted to give the A321LR a try. That said, ba.com throws up an error message when you try to book so I can’t give exact details. There is no availability at all via avios.com. It is still early days though.

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Category

Aer Lingus and AerClub

Comments (37)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Alex G says:
    30 Sep30 September 04:47

    Worth noting that the Cleveland flights are from Dublin.

  • Erico1875 says:
    30 Sep30 September 06:56

    A $5K subsidy , assuming full capacity is only really $25 to $30.
    Does that amount really make a difference when choosing a route?

    • memesweeper says:
      30 Sep30 September 07:31

      If it pays towards the leasing of the aircraft and/or fuel is hugely reduces risk, and Lingus will have the route to themselves indefinitely.

    • Rob says:
      30 Sep30 September 08:40

      These are baby aircraft remember. $5k is a lot of seat equivalents.

      You also ignore the fact that 10 x $500 economy seats proabably contribute about $2000 after fuel, aiport taxes, Government taxes etc. For the airline it is probably the equivalent of 25 economy seats sold, on a plane seating 184.

      • Erico1875 says:
        30 Sep30 September 09:05

        Exactly. So they need to sell 160 seats per flights at the same price pp as a full flight to NY. If they have to discount those seats by even a tenner average to get that capacity, then the subsidy is wiped out.

        • Nick says:
          30 Sep30 September 09:53

          Great point.

        • CamFlyer says:
          30 Sep30 September 11:45

          The flights to secondary US cities tend to be less subject to heavy discounting in Y than the major hubs, as they are far less competitive. This looks very similar to when DL ran PIT-CDG (also initially subsidized), which did well enough on a 757 until squeezed out by BA starting PIT-LHR on a 787.

      • The Savage Squirrel says:
        30 Sep30 September 13:17

        Even better; equivalent of 25 seats sold but unused meaning (a) a chance to “oversell” by 25 and (b) revenue equivalent of 25 passengers and luggage but with zero weight – so maybe the equivalent of selling 30-40 tickets…

  • Barry cutters says:
    30 Sep30 September 07:23

    Do you think ba/ AL etc will be worried they are so US route focussed . Surely the likes of Miami , Orlando , lax, vegas etc will be strongly reduced in tourist traffic for the next year at least .

    I travel monthly as a tourist with normally 2-3 us trips a year and work be doing anything while the pound is at this level . Us hotels were expensive enough before al this Happend

    • BuildBackBetter says:
      30 Sep30 September 12:42

      The opposite side has a bigger incentive. Its cheap now for US travellers – who are both more in number and wealth.
      A recent study said there are 20 million millionaires in US.

  • Terry says:
    30 Sep30 September 07:26

    I flew LHR-CLE on a Continental 757, back in 2009.

  • Blair Waldorf Salad says:
    30 Sep30 September 07:47

    Isn’t this just a shuttle for the biotech industry, equivalent to AA’s Charlotte to Dublin route for the banking sector there to send managers to keep watch on its Dublin subsidiaries. And United’s SFO route similarly block-booked months ahead as a shuttle for the tech sector.

  • Paul says:
    30 Sep30 September 08:01

    There no mention of where the flights actually take off from 🤦‍♂️

    • tony says:
      30 Sep30 September 08:09

      But as we were all reminded yesterday, Rob and Rhys have won 5 national awards for their writing, so by virtue of this they understand exactly what we need to know. It’s not in our gift to question why they have omitted the rather key fact about where the flights actually run from….

    • The Streets says:
      30 Sep30 September 08:18

      It will be flying from Athens. Aer Lingus is a major Greek airline

    • Alex G says:
      30 Sep30 September 08:42

      Shannon presumably. Or maybe Manchester.

    • Brian78 says:
      30 Sep30 September 09:27

      “ The airline will be flying from Dublin to Cleveland”

      Is says so in one of the first paragraphs?

      • Nick says:
        30 Sep30 September 09:53

        “Never wrong for long” 😂
        It’s an efficiency for bloggers rather than writers for the dead tree press – hit publish without having to waste time proof-reading, then get your audience to volunteer corrections free of charge. Smart.

      • Alex G says:
        30 Sep30 September 10:10

        It does now. It was added around 08:45.

  • David says:
    30 Sep30 September 08:05

    For a tourist, Cleveland offers the same unexpected benefits as to what I mentioned when BA restarted their LHR-PIT route, that being it’s actually a great place to start off an interesting and different US road trip.

    • dougzz99 says:
      30 Sep30 September 09:14

      Cleveland has made an effort to attract more visitors. For sports fans it has NFL, NBA and MLB teams, all interesting in different ways. The Browns who are not the originals Browns, they left for Baltimore to replace the Colts that left for Indianapolis, have signed a player for $200 million plus despite 20+ women accusing him of assault. The MLB team recently changed from Indians to Guardians as they finally conceded the Native Americans references were offensive, and the NBA team finally won a Championship when LBJ returned for a 2nd spell there. I agree it’s a decent starting point for a good road trip, but on Cleveland itself I’m rather divided. In 1969 the river in Cleveland was so polluted it caught fire, Randy did a song https://youtu.be/uMCtTnFEujU Despite everything I liked Cleveland and will go back, so not as divided as I thought.

  • SammyJ says:
    30 Sep30 September 08:40

    Woohoo, direct flights (well, via Dublin) to Cedar Point, Sandusky! Excellent place to go with theme-park loving teens.

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