aer lingus to restart dublin - orlando route

[dolphinv]

Well a quick update, flights start from October 30th 2007 and operate on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Blott the problem you had last time was Aer Lingus Orlando MCO was a charter flight operated by AerLingus but not connected to their other flights so if you got delayed it was 'hard luck' !!

The new flights are part of the AerLingus new scheduled routes and if you miss a connection they need to look after you. The Shannon stop over was a legal item agreed with Ireland and the USA where 50% of all flights had to do a Shannon stop. With the new open skys policy this will now end and we can have proper direct flights!

The immigration at Dublin was hit and miss because this was a charter flight, you will now pass through US immigration at Dublin unless the flight has been delayed and they need a quick departure!

[orlandodaze]

The one and only time we used the Aer Lingus Dublin to Orlando route we had a great trouble free flight going over(just didnt clear immigration in Dublin ) but a disasterous flight coming home with a very disgruntled crew who took their wrath out on us the innocent passengers ,it started with no tv/movies the whole way home ,they didnt serve dinner they practically threw it at us , they refused to respond to the pleas for help from a mother for her sick child and then they dumped us in Shannon for 2 hours after leaving us on the plane on the tarmac for one hour before eventually taking us back to Dublin where we waited a further hour to be renunited with our luggage . I felt particularly sorry for passengers from the UK who had missed their connections . I hope none of those people are going to be crew members when they start back up in October.Normally Aer Lingus is a great airline to travel with and they pride themselves on their professional and well trained crews so our experiance was very much out of character with the airline.

[allyjack]

At least there won't be a Shannon stop now so that is something.
It was announced yesterday that from May they will be charging for booking seats. No charge if you select at check in on the day. Looks like it doesn't affect US flights though


From the end of May customers may choose to pre-book seating in the first five seat rows at a charge of €10, an exit row seat at a charge of €15 and all remaining at a charge of €3. Alternatively, customers may continue to select their seat at check-in or when using the self-service check-in facility FastPass at no additional charge. In advance of this enhanced facility customers may pre-select their seat online at an introductory charge of €3 per seat effective from Wednesday 4th April. This enhanced facility will allow customers to choose their preferred seat on board all Aer Lingus short haul flights, to/from UK and Europe only, when booking online.