First Bus Ireland (Aircoach/Matthews) Discussion

[F Great Eastern]

17 new 13 metre Volvo B8RLE / MCV Evoras are being introduced to the fleet.

17-strong Volvo B8RLE MCV Evora fleet joins Aircoach in Dublin - routeone

Aircoach has taken delivery of 17 Volvo B8RLE single-deckers with MCV Evora bodywork for use on behalf of Dublin Airport Authority.

www.route-one.net

They've already been in Dublin since May 2023!

 

[F Great Eastern]

Aircoach are to withdraw the following routes from 8th April

• 706 - Dublin Airport - Dublin - Maynooth - Athlone - Ballinasloe - Galway
• 706x - Dublin Airport - Dublin - Athlone - Galway

They have been unable to gain a foothold in the corridor, thanks in part to the merger of Irish CityLink and GoBus.ie some while ago, who were by far the two dominant operators on the corridor, who steadily increased services to up to four buses an hour between Galway and Dublin on their various variations making it almost impossible for anyone else to compete.

CityLink have been very careful on the corridor in that they have continued to run non stop CityLink and GoBus services between Dublin and Galway under two separate licenses and brands, liveries and Ltd companies despite sharing tickets, websites and trading addresses, so technically have both non-stop licenses between Dublin and Galway despite being technically in the same ownership.

However there is some stupidity in that the only reason that the competition committee in Ireland cleared the merger was that Aircoach had agreed to start their low frequency service and some may say that that was an awful commercial move by Aircoach, since if they hadn't have agreed to do that, the merger would have most likely been conditional on one of the now merged operations foregoing their license on the corridor and making it available to someone else. In the end, CityLink got what they wanted, their biggest competitor on the corridor acquired, a very dominant position and a very weak competitor who were never going to be able to compete.

The other thing is that the way Aircoach went about this announcement was very anti-passenger. On Wednesday they contacted all the pre-booked passengers for Thursday that the services were not running for operational reasons. To allow a meeting to take place on the Thursday with effected staff, they chose to cancel the entire schedule of the 706/706x for the day. However no notice was posted on their website or on social media. This meant that walk up passengers, or those free pass holders, were left waiting by the roadside with no idea services were not running.

This comes on the back of a worrying trend for the operation, where over the last few months the coach tracker has not been on the Aircoach site and they are no longer posting cancellations on social media and there has been a real issue with lack of transparency about the reliability, punctuality of services and service cancellations, which has clearly now hit a new low.

 

[markymark2000]

The other thing is that the way Aircoach went about this announcement was very anti-passenger.

Same can be said for almost all First Group companies. No care for passengers at all from the group.

 

[F Great Eastern]

Same can be said for almost all First Group companies. No care for passengers at all from the group.

Indeed but cancelling a whole route for a day with no notice that the services are not running is bad even for them.

 

[F Great Eastern]

According to a few websites in Ireland Aircoach have placed an order for DAF based Irizar i6s.

After buying Plaxton Panthers for 10 years, seems just the single batch of (poorly spec'd) Mercedes Tourismos, they're already looking elsewhere.

In other news, a Panther has also got a 25 year livery

https://www.flickr.com/photos/60501971@N08/53608277104

 

[Flange Squeal]

According to a few websites in Ireland Aircoach have placed an order for DAF based Irizar i6s.

After buying Plaxton Panthers for 10 years, seems just the single batch of (poorly spec'd) Mercedes Tourismos, they're already looking elsewhere.

With Plaxton having halted taking further coach orders for a year or two to allow expanded bus manufacturing, and an operator I’m associated with telling me they were given a lead time of around a year for a new Tourismo, I can’t say I’m surprised!

 

[F Great Eastern]

With Plaxton having halted taking further coach orders for a year or two to allow expanded bus manufacturing, and an operator I’m associated with telling me they were given a lead time of around a year for a new Tourismo, I can’t say I’m surprised!

Anyone who had gone on the Aircoach Tourismos has given only negative feedback about them in terms of them being a cheap spec interior so I doubt too many in Ireland will be crying about them going for something else, but who knows if they will actually spec the Irizar's any better. The Tourismo is an EXCELLENT coach, but even the best coach can be let down by penny pinching spec choices.

The 12.6m Panthers Aircoach have at 53 seats are pretty average compared to what their competitors are offering, but the Tourismo's took that one step further, going up to 55 seats and a larger wheelchair area which in essence means another row has been squeezed in and the Panthers were a downgrade on what came before.

No wonder they are losing market share when the competition are ordering vehicles and removing a row of seats versus standard spec and Aircoach are adding a row of seats to their vehicle choices. Honestly Aircoach these days feels like a cattle class commuter train pack them in interior whereas the competition look like First Class Intercity.

 

[GusB]

According to a few websites in Ireland Aircoach have placed an order for DAF based Irizar i6s.

Could you post a link to one of these sources and quote the relevant part, please?

 

[F Great Eastern]

Could you post a link to one of these sources and quote the relevant part, please?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058048557/dublin-airport-bus-service-changes/p34

It has been reported over on the Irish Road Transport Users forum that apparently Aircoach have new Scania irizar i6 coaches on order.

Hopefully these are destined for the Cork and Belfast route and have a better specification to compete with DX/Citylink.

Apparently some of the order are also going to Railair service in the UK. They have traditionally used i6’s but dual axel ones with 47 seats, three rail style tables (4 seats around the table) and no toilet.

Obviously not a spec suitable for intercity service and would be odd for the airport services too. I’d assume Aircoach would spec them differently for their service.

i understood they were DAF i6 not scania

 

[handandy67]

Buses
Volvo B8RLE MCV eVoRa 12.9m are B28D with the following fleet numbers.

69603	231D25772
69604	231D25773
69605	231D25774
69606	231D25775
69607	231D25776
69608	231D25778
69609	231D25780
69611	231D25835
69612	231D25838
69614	231D25840
69615	231D25841
69613	231D25849
69616	231D25851
69617	231D25852
69610	231D25861
69601	231D25943
69602	231D25948

Coaches
Mercedes Tourismos, believed to be the 12.3m variant (not confirmed) with conflicting reports on seating capacity depending on who you ask.

24206	231D15557
24204	231D15559
24207	231D15561
24205	231D15562
24203	231D15563
24211	BV72YCD
24210	BV72YCE
24209	BV72YCF
24208	BV72YCG

updated last 4 24208-11 edited them in

 

[F Great Eastern]

In order to cut costs Aircoach have decided to move their customer service to the First Bus central customer service centre in England.

In addition, there is said to be a big network reconfiguration coming up and the ill thought out spec on the Mercedes Tourismos has seen them consigned to local routes only as they are considered as something of white elephants locally due to the unsuitable spec.

There is talk of ex First Double Decks coming to Aircoach to take over the 700 route too.

All this and more, here:
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058048557/dublin-airport-bus-service-changes#latest

700 - exension to Cherrywood via the N11 (the current 702 from Galloping Green onwards, then up the flyover)

702 - Going hourly, via the East Link and the current 703 route from Merrion Rd onwards, Still terminating at Greystones.

703 - Gone

701 - New route serving the city centre alongside the 700, but branching off to serve Merrion Square and Ballsbridge. Terminating at Vincents hospital

Irizar Integrals are on order, but if it goes like the tourismos they'll be driving 241 plates in early 2025. Theres a roumour floating about that the 700 may be getting double deck city buses to alleviate capacity issues.

 

[sk688]

Will be interesting to see how these changes affect fares.

Ive recently moved from Portobello to Donnybrook, so now will be using the 700 to get to the Airport rather than the 782/783

I still personally don't see why they persist with sending the 700 up through Drumcondra, the traffic there alone adds a stupid amount of time to the route

 

[F Great Eastern]

Aircoach have now confirmed by email to all customers, changes to customer service which is now run from the UK. It's believed NI based customer service staff have been made redundant.

They'll no longer open the customer service lines at weekends, and will only staff them between 9am and 5pm during the week. Also have now informed people that it will be up to 14 days before customers will get a response to emails.

Very poor for an airport service that operates 24 hours a day,

 

[F Great Eastern]

The new network being rolled out has caused serious service unreliability over the operation.

Initially the new network was delayed by a week where temporary timetables were put in place. During this time the company stopped taking online bookings for services and instead people had to chance their arm of being able to board a service, with full coaches pretty common due to the lower than originally planned frequency of services. In addition the temporary timetables said they were only valid until the end of June, but were actually valid for a further week, and the main timetables section of the Aircoach site had the new timetables listed as current, despite the fact they were delayed for a week.

The new network did launch a week late, but there were frequent cancellations and missing services and various rumours flying about as to why that was and the now UK based customer service seemed to struggle a little bit, not knowing the operation as well as the previous locally ran unit. With the service become even more unreliable, around a week ago the company released a statement saying that they will need to cancel further services and that they are not providing a list of services that are not running, but have advised people to look at the journey planner to see which ones are running and have advised customers to 'travel on an earlier Aircoach service to ensure you complete your onward journey'

The situation has been investigated by the Irish Independent this week and it has found that over 50 services a day are being cancelled by the operator and on some routes there have been large gaps and up a third or the departures on a half hour frequency route being cancelled. The Irish Independent has revealed that the reason for the cancellations appears to be due to Aircoach implementing new rosters unilaterally and outside agreed procedures with the SIPTU Trade Union so they are working under protest and it's believed some drivers have left the operation over the rosters.

The company meanwhile has emphasised that the reason for the cancellations continues to be a shortage of drivers, which is an industry wide problem and has not directly commented on the industrial relations issue.

 

[Scotrail88]

Is there any update on electric vehicles for Dublin airport services?

The Volvos were supposed to be a stop gap as far as understood

 

[F Great Eastern]

The infrastructure isn't in place yet for the Irizar ie.trams at the airport or the car parks they will serve to charge them between runs when needed, so whilst that is the case, even if they were ready to be delivered, they are not going to be able to enter service for a while anyway.

Aircoach probably have a lot more things to worry about at the moment reading on Irish transport forums recently, with everything from frequent service cancellations, industrial unrest and significant price rises being just some of the issues that have generated a lot of bad feeling amongst passengers of which NatEx and CityLink are benefiting from.

 

[Robertj21a]

It sounds like the Aircoach operation from Leicester to Birmingham Airport is to be withdrawn. Any confirmation ?

 

[markymark2000]

It sounds like the Aircoach operation from Leicester to Birmingham Airport is to be withdrawn. Any confirmation ?

No trips are bookable on the website for any date after the 30th August.

 

[Volvodart]

It sounds like the Aircoach operation from Leicester to Birmingham Airport is to be withdrawn. Any confirmation ?

Officially 31 August 2024 is the end date but they will honour bookings until 31 October 2024

Aircoach has announced the conclusion of its trial service between Leicester and Birmingham. | Aircoach UK

Aircoach has announced the conclusion of its trial service between Leicester and Birmingham. Launched in September 2023, the service aimed to offer a fast, reliable, and affordable connection between St Margaret's Bus Station in Leicester and Birmingham Airport. The trial will officially end on...

aircoach.travel

Aircoach has announced the conclusion of its trial service between Leicester and Birmingham.

Launched in September 2023, the service aimed to offer a fast, reliable, and affordable connection between St Margaret's Bus Station in Leicester and Birmingham Airport. The trial will officially end on August 31, 2024.

A spokesperson for First Bus in Leicester stated,

“The trial of our Aircoach service between Leicester and Birmingham has now concluded.

Over the spring and summer months we have been monitoring bookings to evaluate sustainability of the service, but unfortunately due to low numbers of people travelling, we have made the decision to discontinue the service from the 31st August 2024.



We would like to thank all Customers who travelled using this service since the trial began in September 2023.



We hope that Customers have enjoyed the low cost, high reliability fast shuttle service that we have been able to provide during this time. We will be running specific services for Customers who have already booked to travel between 1st September until the 31st October, these journeys will be open to further bookings via aircoach.travel, subject to availability

 

[F Great Eastern]

Very much PR speak there, calling it a trial service when they remove it, but never ever called it a trial service before that?

The economics and yields always going to be hard to sustain, given the demand levels and the small capacity even if the demand was there.

 

[Robertj21a]

Running 24/7 - 48 departures overall every day is some 'trial' (not that it was ever described as such until today).

 

[route101]

Officially 31 August 2024 is the end date but they will honour bookings until 31 October 2024

Aircoach has announced the conclusion of its trial service between Leicester and Birmingham. | Aircoach UK

Aircoach has announced the conclusion of its trial service between Leicester and Birmingham. Launched in September 2023, the service aimed to offer a fast, reliable, and affordable connection between St Margaret's Bus Station in Leicester and Birmingham Airport. The trial will officially end on...

aircoach.travel

Does this service use a Merc Sprinter?

 

[markymark2000]

Does this service use a Merc Sprinter?

Yes

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Very much PR speak there, calling it a trial service when they remove it, but never ever called it a trial service before that?

The economics and yields always going to be hard to sustain, given the demand levels and the small capacity even if the demand was there.

Running 24/7 - 48 departures overall every day is some 'trial' (not that it was ever described as such until today).

Not certain why First would have officially called it a trial - that would hardly inspire confidence in prospective passengers.

I agree with @F Great Eastern - I was always doubtful that there was enough trade and limited capacity. Cheaper vehicles but still the same driver costs!

 

[JD2168]

Yes

Not sure if an Airport service would have ever worked or generated the interest to keep it going with the Sprinters particularly as space for passengers with suitcases or other luggage is limited on such vehicles.

 

[markymark2000]

I think the issue in my opinion was that they didn't put Birmingham International Station into the route sooner and they tried to push it too hard as an Airport bus, which is a limited market given the usage at Birmingham Airport. Only later on did they start to push it as a link to the NEC (via the monorail) and only in the past few weeks did they add in Birmingham International Station as a stop. It could have been ideal for people going to the NEC or Resorts World. Bearing in mind, the route wasn't registered so nothing stopped them cancelling 1 trip or diverting 1 trip to Resort World when there is an event on.

 

[F Great Eastern]

Aircoach have announced that they have swung from a €1.8m profit to a €7.3m loss in their latest accounts, the biggest loss in the companies history.

From everything that I have read on Irish forums similar to this one, the future isn't looking too rosy for the operation as it has been and continues to be plagued by frequent cancellations (21 departures cancelled yesterday alone), changes to route networks that are unpopular, poor commercial decision making and is offering much more basic and high density vehicles than operated by it's competitors. The recent industrial unrest however, appears to have eased, but still the operation has trouble retaining enough drivers.

From the outside, it really does look like it needs a strong, experienced figure to turn it around. Instead I believe that the two most senior figures over the past 12 months or so are new to the industry, having been taken from the shipping world.

 

[F Great Eastern]

The new network being rolled out has caused serious service unreliability over the operation.

Initially the new network was delayed by a week where temporary timetables were put in place. During this time the company stopped taking online bookings for services and instead people had to chance their arm of being able to board a service, with full coaches pretty common due to the lower than originally planned frequency of services. In addition the temporary timetables said they were only valid until the end of June, but were actually valid for a further week, and the main timetables section of the Aircoach site had the new timetables listed as current, despite the fact they were delayed for a week.

The new network did launch a week late, but there were frequent cancellations and missing services and various rumours flying about as to why that was and the now UK based customer service seemed to struggle a little bit, not knowing the operation as well as the previous locally ran unit. With the service become even more unreliable, around a week ago the company released a statement saying that they will need to cancel further services and that they are not providing a list of services that are not running, but have advised people to look at the journey planner to see which ones are running and have advised customers to 'travel on an earlier Aircoach service to ensure you complete your onward journey'

The situation has been investigated by the Irish Independent this week and it has found that over 50 services a day are being cancelled by the operator and on some routes there have been large gaps and up a third or the departures on a half hour frequency route being cancelled. The Irish Independent has revealed that the reason for the cancellations appears to be due to Aircoach implementing new rosters unilaterally and outside agreed procedures with the SIPTU Trade Union so they are working under protest and it's believed some drivers have left the operation over the rosters.

The company meanwhile has emphasised that the reason for the cancellations continues to be a shortage of drivers, which is an industry wide problem and has not directly commented on the industrial relations issue.

As predicted the Aircoach operation has massively tanked since the ill-advised network review last year with reports in the media and on other forums where Aircoach staff post are suggesting major changes are ahead.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/irishtransport/aircoach-fleet-news-t19936-s110.html#p144389

Merging the 702 and 703 route together in the middle of last year but splitting out the inner suburbs part of the route into a new 701 led to a dispute with staff over rosters which led to many cancellations and then led on to a driver shortage which went on for a number of months. The unreliability of the service and the combined nature of the 702 and 703 (now one route, the 702) substantially lengthened the journey for some passengers on the 702 route to the point where the journey times were now so slow it was cheaper and much quicker to take other connecting modes of transport to the airport. This has seen the outer end of the longer 702 route suffer from a dramatic drop in passenger numbers to the point where the sections unique to the original routing of the 702 route are no longer commercially viable. The 702 route is widely reported in the media to be axed very shortly and something similar to the old 703 will return

https://www.greystonesguide.ie/is-our-aircoach-taking-flight/

The 700 service was originally running to South Dublin via the city centre every 15 minutes but the network review saw that reduced to every 30 minutes and slightly extended, but the core city centre section still had a 15 minute frequency thanks to the 701 running every 30 minutes via the same central corridor. However the unique section of the 701, serving Dublin's inner suburbs (which was taken out of the 702/703) has really struggled to the point that laps are being dropped now and the unique section is barely being used. The 701 is also strongly reported to be being axed very soon as like the 702, it is carrying a lot of fresh air on the unique parts of the route. It will be interesting to see what they do with the 700 now, but all routes look to be in retreat in some way or other with even the prospect of coaches being axed from some routes in favour of buses.

National Express are making hay in the current environment where poor network decisions have allowed them to substantially grow their customer base. They are up to 8 buses and hour to Dublin Airport through the city, having increased the frequency of their services by 33% since the Aircoach network changes and are rumoured to be looking to increase services further to ramp up pressure on First who appear to have no answer.

It looks like most of the changes essentially boil down to undoing the recent network changes with
- The 700 revision in July set to be scrapped having it's new stops removed and reverting to it's pre July routing but maybe at half the frequency of pre-July.
- The 701 introduced in July is going to be scrapped.
- The 702 revises route introduced in July will be scrapped completely, even the pre-July version will not come back.
- The 703 which was scrapped in July will be brought back.

It's worth pointing out that the 702 and 703 happily existed as hourly routes in their own right for the best part of a decade and were commercially viable before they were fiddled with post covid. It seems there has been a lot of tinkering around the edges and trying to move certain areas covered by some routes into other routes and trying to be clever with this, which not only have the new routes not attracted the desired new customers, they've also alienated a considerable amount of existing ones.

Also in vehicle news, 141 Panthers 20901-20905 are now withdrawn with 20906-20910 to follow shortly. There's also talk that more won't be far behind.

 

[F Great Eastern]

The above reports about the Aircoach service changes has now been confirmed following a letter issued by a PR company to local stakeholders where it blamed increased journey times on increased traffic, rather than the fact they amalgamated two routes together last summer which seemingly hit the demand of the outer ends of the route because it had many more stops added to it that made it slower than other means.

https://www.aircoach.ie/news/aircoach-announces-changes-its-dublin-services

This has now been called out by local officials in Ireland, who have hit out at the company for not engaging with local stakeholders and the mismanagement of the route.

https://www.greystonesguide.ie/is-our-aircoach-taking-flight-feb25/

Cllr Stokes stated: “Aircoach cited declining passenger numbers for this decision. The reality is that numbers are down because the service goes halfway round the world, or worse it fails to turn up on occasion. What passengers want is efficient and reliable services. Aircoach have not listened to common sense.

"It’s a pity that Aircoach didn’t have the decency to write to local representative directly. Instead they hired a PR firm to handle their image. The image here is clear, Aircoach mismanaged previous changes, and now they have taken the easy option. It’s a shame that the current management has taken this decision."

 

[sk688]

Very disappointing decision , although the poor reliabillty and extended journey times of the 702 probably didnt help

Even though I live near to a 702 stop , it's quicker to get the DART and Dublin Express combo , and the high frequency of DX services from Tara Street to the Airport make it a no-brainer