Ryanair have made it clear that the main reason they are not entering the long haul market, is access to aircraft.

“the usual uninformed comments” what an unpleasant way to begin.

The government has already committed itself to selling its shareholding in AL. when this sale happens it’ll be expected that other shareholders will also sell to take advantage of a boost in share price caused by the sale. I’m not saying it’ll be good if Ryanair is the buyer and then the majority shareholder, but not selling is no longer an option, and AL needs a better incentive to

Offer than just “don’t sell to Ryanair, they’re bad peoples”. Bad strategy on the part of AL.

Dave I wouldn’t like to see Ryanair buy EI simply from a competition point of view. But if the assumption is that smaller carriers will get squeezed out of the market. who is around to buy out Aer,Lingus?

Access to aircraft…. Seriously… You believe that?

Is there something wrong that they can’t order them from Boeing like the do every other plane they use…

Why not PJ? What great insight do you have that Ryanair will be the ruin of AL? The ruin of AL to date is the unions, they fight over cost saving programmes, yet their members are significant shareholders – talk about shooting yourself in the foot! Cost savings are designed to provide more profit for the shareholders yet they oppose any such moves – don’t see the sense in that myself?? Perhaps I am missing something there??

IMO the better the devil you know, than the one you don’t! Do you really think the likes of Eithad or some other big airline will take on AL with it’s massive whole in the employees pension fund and retain all the employment here. I doubt it, more likely AL would be swallowed by the bigger airline, all services that can be moved out of the country creating an immediate cost saving will go straight away and piece by piece AL will be gone and now you are at the mercy of foreign airline with Ryanair as the sole national carrier. So why not work with O’Leary, he has a proven track record certainly on the shorthaul flights, lets see what he can do with longhaul, ultimately Ryanair will be our national carrier. So if you can’t beat them – join them!!

BTW, why write to the shareholders if they believe the Euro Commission will oppose the takeover on competition grounds? Sounds to me like the Euro Commission has changed tack on these mergers giving the current crisis.

Mick OLeary goes on about the monopoly of the DAA running cork,Dublin airport and Shannon airport before it was taken out of semi state ownership.Is he not contracting himself about monopolies if he gets hold of aer lingus.He will hold the biggest monopoly in the history of the state.
As for long haul Ryan air wont pay to land in main airports in the east or west cost of America.Like 99% of the airports they use in Europe you will be left 2hours by coach to your major destination..

The national airline is not making profit,so can they tell me why they dont wanna sell…until they can prove the company is making any profit it will be very hard to convince shareholders not to sell…

Wish i can delete my 1st comment cos i smell something fishy with ryanair..

Wish you could delete it too, They are making a profit, their a public company , check their returns for ‘proof’

The price of something to a company that’s going to run it too the ground, borrow against it’s assets, allocate profitability to it’s mainline business and let it collapse differs in value to a company that’s going to invest in, develop and use an airline to feed into it’s mainline functions. As do the associated risks

Google ‘Ansett’ Australia’s once second largest airline….

Tensing, you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about because if you did you would know that it is Etihad, not Emirates who are interested in Aer Lingus AND you would be more then aware of yesterday’s announcement that the two airlines are launching a significant codeshare agreement with a view of building a stronger business together!
And a great partnership it would be for both companies and their customers!

I won’t sell my house because I feel if I wait 55 years the intrinsic value will be more….joke

It would destroy Ei if fr took over

I couldn’t care less about EI, it was a sinking ship for decades before Willie Walsh took over.
Destroying competition in the Irish market though that’s something we should be very worried about

Are you familiar with the concept of competition and what happens to markets without any?

They are not the most profitable airline in the world. That is Emirates.
They are not the biggest airline in the world, not even Europe that is Lufthansa.
They are not Europes most on time airline that is SAS.
It’s all lies lies lies.

Ryanair ARE Europes most subsidised airline to the tune of 305 million Euro per year. Now there is a fact.