The arrival of American Airlines on the Atlantic flyway to Ireland means that there will now be a record number of scheduled U.S. carriers serving Ireland in addition to Aer Lingus.
The other U.S. carriers currently serving Ireland are Continental, Delta and U.S. Airlines.
Delta flies from Atlanta to Shannon and Dublin, while U.S. Airways operates out of Philadelphia. Continental, which flies to Shannon and Dublin out of Newark, recently announced plans to fly to Belfast, also beginning in May 2005.
The announcement from American was not unexpected.
The carrier, which is headquartered at Dallas/Fort Worth airport, applied for landing slots at both Irish airports in advance of an Oct. 31 deadline.
American Airlines is a partner with Aer Lingus in the Oneworld alliance, but the Irish carrier has indicated that it is looking to leave the agreement as part of its plan to reinvent itself as a low-cost airline.
A spokesman for Aer Lingus in New York, Brian Murphy, said that the Oneworld alliance — in which earned passenger miles can be interchanged between member airlines — was still in operation.
But the current code sharing agreement between Aer Lingus and American over the Atlantic would be only running until the end of January, he said.
Under the code-share arrangement, travelers who book flights to Ireland through American Airlines fly to the country on Aer Lingus planes.
Meanwhile, the planned American Airlines service out of Chicago will depart O’Hare at 7:36 p.m. and arrive in Dublin at 8:55 the following morning. The Boston-to-Shannon flight will depart Logan at 8:25 p.m. and arrive in Shannon at 7:15 a.m. the following day.
The Chicago-to-Dublin service will use a Boeing 767-300 with 29 business-class seats and 182 seats in economy. The Boston-to-Shannon service will use a Boeing 757. It will have a single, economy cabin with 188 seats.
The American Airlines announcement was welcomed by Ireland’s tourism minister, John O’Donoghue, and the country’s tourism agency, Tourism Ireland.
The latter has been planning for an increase of 7.8 percent in the number of U.S. visitors to Ireland in 2005.
Almost a million Americans will have visited Ireland by the end of 2004, according to Tourism Ireland.
A spokesman for American Airlines said that the carrier was “very excited” about the prospect of flying into Ireland. He said that the Oneworld alliance with Aer Lingus was still operating but that the “stats” had favored American operating its own flights to Dublin and Shannon.
Coach fares out of Boston would be “as low” as $250, the spokesman said.