Aer Lingus is planning to launch its restored route to San Francisco, California, in April next year, as well as a direct route to Toronto, Ontario, according to an airline routes website. The news will be welcomed by inward investment technology and pharmaceutical companies headquartered in and around San Francisco.
According to screenshots seen by route-spotting site Airline Route, Aer Lingus plans to resume its service to San Francisco with five weekly Airbus A330-200 aircraft to and from the city.
The reservation for the new routes opened briefly in the early hours of today (2 July) for about two to three hours before being removed at around 3am.
Aer Lingus closed its four days a week San Francisco direct service in 2009 in the wake of the economic crisis.
More than 40pc of US technology companies based in Ireland have their headquarters in San Francisco and nearby Silicon Valley.
Yesterday, reports emerged that the Irish airline was planning to restore the flights following calls from major investors in Ireland including Facebook, Google and Apple.
San Francisco is also the subject of intense focus by Irish technology start-ups.
The addition of a daily route from Dublin to Toronto also marks the airline’s return to the Canadian market on a scheduled basis for the first time since 1979, when there was a twice-weekly Shannon to Montreal route. There was also a cargo service that operated until 1983.
When Siliconrepublic.com spoke to Aer Lingus about the matter in April, a spokesman said at the time: “Our transatlantic schedule for 2014 will not be finalised until June of this year, at the earliest. No decision has been made at this point in time.”
The spokesman today responded that the airline has no comment to make at this time.
UPDATE: The new routes have since been confirmed by Aer Lingus.
San Francisco bridge image via Shutterstock
