With their 189 seater Boeings thats 1100+ seats a day on Kerry-Dublin. All bar the very peak Friday/Sunday evening and All-Ireland Final weekend flights (note: we Kerry folk don’t bother travelling for the easy rounds 
) will have to be sold for nothing. It would pay the Jackeens to come down to Kerry for the night out with the cheaper beer and women down here and get the 6am flight back after the disco, shag and snackbox. Whooow!
Really, but is that the kind of modern Ireland we want to be promoting? Should our young people aspire to this kind of 'Lancaster lads on tour ‘08’ complete with silly wigs and pink t-shirts? (I’m sure the Kerry publicans wouldn’t be complaining)
Imagine if you could fill those weekend planes with entrepreneurial boffins travelling to the next open-source software development conference? I know Openstreetmaps.org are having their annual conference in Limerick this year – that’s the kind of tourism we should be promoting. Not booze cruises which, arguably, do more harm than good to the hard-earned image of Ireland.
Just not getting into the spirit of things - aren’t you CP? 
Aer Arann have increased their prices consistently the last few years - now very expensive and not to be used except in emergency even in off peak times
this is great for competition
I drove from Dublin to Killarney and spent an evening in Killarney with hardly a soul around in rainy March. I noted the motorway was being built all the way to Cork.
Dublin airport isn’t convenient enough to Dublin and Kerry Airport doesn’t appear to be too close to anything either(I passed by it)
The government are supporting this route which is costing them money and foregoing income from petrol and diesel on Buses and Cars, missing out on two possible tolls along the route.
I don’t see the sense of it.
Ryanair have obviously decided to turn the screw on Aer Arann and their nice profitable margins which they have been shunting ever upwards. Ryanair can divert some excess capacity at very little cost
They could base a Stansted plane in Kerry seeing as it will have to overnight here anyway and reduce airport standing costs.
What country is Kerry in again?
The Kingdom!
Grand so KN – make Kerry the yob sink for the British Isles. Can we put an electrified fence around the county too?
Forgive me if I’m incorrect but aren’t the PSOs paid out on the basis of bums on seats??? IE if nobody ACTUALLY flys to Kerry, no money in the coffers…
Flying a largely empty 189 seat jet down to Kerry and back is an expensive proposition, when you look at it from all angles, including crewing, etc.
I’d take this as a mark of desperation more than anything else from Ryanair and enjoy Aer Arann while they last folks… No airline has a divine right to existence but for competition to actually be like competitive, you need choices and the various recent predatory acts by Ryanair, dumping huge amounts of capacity on Cork for example, might be in line with the free market but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee competition or a fairer deal for consumers into the future.
Spot on. Look at what Ryanair did with Easyjet (and to a lesser extend Aer Orange) in Shannon. Two years ago I had a great choice going back home, and it was pretty competitive. Then Ryanair dumped on Easyjet, and they had no option but to pull out.
Now it’s just Ryanair, and prices have pretty much doubled in that period. When the oil crisis really peaks, I reckon I’ll be back to my student days of rail / boat.
Wow! Only read the content now!!! 
That’s a huge amount of capacity on that route! Can anyone in Kerry advise how many people need to get up and down to Dublin on a daily basis?
Did Aer Arann have this last? I wonder what numbers they did…
Aer Arann ran their 70 seat propeller on the route so an additional 120 seats on every flight. If you not checking in you will probably have most seats at E10-15 each way or E20-30 return all in. I can get Kerry-London for E26 return all in or Kerry-Frankfurt Hahn E40-50 return (check in online no luggage).
The big losers are CIE. The morning services will be empty. At E70 return for a crap service they deserve everything that’s coming to them.
Damn right. I find it unbelievable that it costs €70 to travel just a couple of hundred km for €70 on a bog-standard diesel train that does 100mph if you’re lucky.
I’ve used the Aer Arann Kerry to Dublin Route. I would gladly whole heartedly and without reservation pay A LOT more to fly with Aer Arann than Ryanair.
Just did a random check with Aer Arann and got a return flight for €70 return including taxes.
At €70 for a return flight, Ryanair would need to be offering to fly me for free (inlcuding tax) and it would still be a tough decision.
Ryanair don’t have Kerry Dublin on their Website so for comparison I tried Cork Dublin. Naturally they claim their fare is €0.99 each way but when taxes etc are included it’s close to €50 return.
I’ll stick with Aer Arann. No question.
-Rd
I also have used this route.
And over the past 18 months prices have soared, I have paid up to €160 return for a 25 min each way flight and have averaged €130 plus.
So much so that recently rather than taking a 10.20pm flight to Kerry for €80 plus took the late train for approx €32. By the time you get to the airport, check it etc the train is not that far behind and certainly €50 in my pocket for an additional hour was worth it
I used to be an Aer Arann fan but then they got “clever” with the pricing systems. My inbox is full of offers that were never there when actually booking them.
This will bring more people to Kerry, Aer Arann ran at approx 60% utilisation on any flights I was on.
Note I do not work for Ryanair etc …but may be if Mick is reading the communications director role might pay well
All it would take would be for Jackie Healy Rae to say – “woe-be-tied any Jackine who flies Ryanair” and that’s that. No respectable Kerry person in their right mind could live with the social stigma of not conforming with the unique laws of the Kingdom.