{"id":395082,"date":"2026-01-28T14:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T14:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/395082\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T14:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T14:04:08","slug":"aer-lingus-confirms-manchester-base-closure-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/395082\/","title":{"rendered":"Aer Lingus confirms Manchester base closure \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Aer Lingus will shut its Manchester Airport base from March 31st, the airline confirmed to staff on Wednesday. The Irish airline flies to US cities and Barbados from the British airport, where it employs around 200 pilots and cabin crew.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The company told workers and their unions on Wednesday that it will fully-cease operations from from March 31st.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cManchester-New York operations will cease from February 23rd 2026 and Aer Lingus plans to operate a service from Dublin to Barbados (subject to receipt of necessary approvals) during the months of April and May to re-accommodate affected customers,\u201d said a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Services between Ireland and Manchester, including Aer Lingus Regional flights, will not be hit, the airline added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Aer Lingus is telling customers that their flights are cancelled and providing them with re-accommodation or refund options. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The airline pledged to continue talks with workers and unions on the reduction in operations \u201credeployment opportunities and the terms of a severance package at the Manchester base\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/business\/2026\/01\/26\/aer-lingus-manchester-passengers-fear-disruption\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Aer Lingus Manchester passengers fear disruptionOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Aer Lingus has been consulting with staff since  November in a process it warned could end in the base\u2019s closure, although it had not confirmed that this would be the outcome.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Earlier this month it said staff could get the option of redeployment elsewhere within Aer Lingus, or its parent, IAG, which also owns Spain\u2019s Iberia and British Airways, or redundancy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Irish carrier began flights from Manchester to New York, Orlando, Florida and Bridgetown, Barbados in 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Recently its chief executive, Lynne Embleton, said that the base was under-performing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Aer Lingus maintains that the Manchester operation is profitable but the margins are lower than the rest of its business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aer Lingus will shut its Manchester Airport base from March 31st, the airline confirmed to staff on Wednesday.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[21507,84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-395082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-aer-lingus","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}