Irish airline CityJet is going to provide aircraft and crew on a wet lease basis to Aer Lingus so they can take over the Dublin to London City route. This will mean CityJet will stop selling tickets in its own right.

For Aer Lingus this means they will now serve three airports in London – Heathrow, Gatwick and City. Aer Lingus will operate up to 50 flights daily between the two cities, which is the busiest air route in Europe.

CityJet Hand Over

CityJet currently operate Avro RJ85 aircraft on the route between Dublin and London City. This regional jet has four engines and will operate a single class of service for Aer Lingus.


You can see what an Aer Lingus painted RJ85 aircraft looks like at the top of this post. CityJet are supposed to be replacing all the Avro RJ aircraft with the Russian Sukhoi SuperJet so perhaps we will see those in Aer Lingus colours soon.

Aer Lingus Schedule

Service commence on 28 October 2018 and until then passengers can book with CityJet as usual. The flight schedule shows up to six flights daily operating between the two cities.

As London City closes from midday on Saturday to midday on Sunday, there are just two flights on Saturday morning and then four flights on Sunday afternoon and evening. Schedules are similar to how they are currently.

Overall Thoughts

Strategy changes at CityJet meant they were always going to switch from operating their own services to providing aircraft for other airlines. I will miss their very attractive cabin crew uniforms which are only a couple of years old.

Aer Lingus will join British Airways in operating the Dublin to London City route, so it will be interesting to see if they compete at all. British Airways does have an edge as they do have business class on European flights.

What do you think of this new route? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Torben Gendorf via Jetphotos.
CityJet RJ85 cabin shot by Ruslan Timerbayev via Planespotters.net