Early last month there was some speculation in the Irish press that United Airlines might be planning to launch service between San Francisco and Dublin. That was mostly fueled by comments made in Ireland by James Mueller, United’s VP Atlantic & Pacific Sales at an event celebrating United’s new Shannon-Chicago service. The Irish Travel Trade News quotes Mueller as stating:
[W]e are looking closely at a non-stop Ireland – US West Coast service and San Francisco is a major hub for us. Customers in the IT space in California are asking for more international routes – and those in Ireland! … Such a route would be ideal for our B787 Dreamliner fleet.
Still no news from United about actually launching the route, and with only eight Dreamliners expected in the fleet by the end of 2013 adding a new route like SFO-DUB seems a bit unlikely anyways. But the service is coming, thanks to Aer Lingus.
Aer Lingus used to fly between the two cities but the route was scuttled in 2009. It appears that after a five year break the carrier is ready to try again, thanks in large part to several large Silicon Valley companies committing to use the flight to move employees between their offices in Ireland and California. And, while the announcement isn’t 100% official yet, the route was briefly loaded in to the GDS networks and on to the Aer Lingus website earlier this morning before being pulled out hours later. Service is expected to operate 5x weekly (x24) on an Airbus A330-200.
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They are also doing YYZ-DUB. Woohoo!