Service will bring to 19 the number of destinations the airline serves in North America
Aer Lingus will serve Indianapolis four times a week from next May
Aer Lingus is planning to launch its latest transatlantic route, with a service between Dublin and Indianapolis due to begin next May.
It’s thought that the route – expected to operate four times a week – could be formally announced later today.
The airline is expanding its network to North America despite the passenger cap at Dublin Airport.
It has recently reassessed its capacity, reducing services between Dublin and London Heathrow, and also considered reassessing deployment of its larger A330 widebody jets.
The service to Indianapolis will bring the number of routes to North America that Aer Lingus serves to 19, almost all of them to the United States. That figure includes a service to Nashville that also begins next year and a Dublin-Las Vegas service that starts this Friday.
Aer Lingus is using new technology aircraft from Airbus that enables it to operate services on so-called ‘thin routes’ where there might not be the level of demand that would fill a larger wide-body aircraft.
The airline, part of the IAG group that also owns British Airways, Iberia and Vueling, is also certain to be obtaining millions of dollars in incentives from Indianapolis Airport and the local government via direct subsidies and marketing support to launch the route.
It will be the first service to Europe that the airport will have had since before the pandemic, when Delta operated a route to Paris. British Airways had considered operating a route to London after the pandemic.
In 2023, Indianapolis International Airport handled just under 8.7 million passengers, which was up 12pc on the 2022 figure. The only international destinations it currently serves are Toronto and Cancun.
Aer Lingus has launched a number of new services to the United States in the past couple of years, including routes from Dublin to Denver and Cincinnati and reopening a route to Minneapolis-St Paul.
Aer Lingus is taking delivery of two new A321XLR jets this year, with others set to arrive next year.
