First are not good at express services.
To be fair to them they were the first operator on Dublin-Cork non stop in 2012 and whilst a competitor came along several months later (GoBus) with a similar timetable (but on the half hour from each city not the hour) and tried to undercut First on fares and use the attraction of bus station based departures and also providing toilets which First did not at that particular time.
However that operation was plagued by the fact that GoBus hesitated about starting, before agreeing a three way partnership (as GoBE) between Bus Eireann and Bernard Kavanagh and itself which led to using BE stations and contracting the running to BK, however GoBus wanted to only sell tickets online and not through BE/BK to build up a passenger database and revenue in case the partnership later broke down as they were the operator/licensee.
Apart from the obvious issues of too many hands in the pie, there were only two vehicles dedicated to the GoBE service. BK is a well known operator in Ireland that operates contract services for many different brands so coaches in many different liveries operated the service sometimes with no indication the service they were operating, some in plain white, sometimes full livery for other brands with a sign in the window for GoBE, and others with stickers messily stuck over the base company logo with the rest of the livery intact.
First fought the toilet war by sending in coaches from the UK with toilets to take away that USP (their existing fleet at the time didn't have any) and then went to a euro cheaper than GoBe on fares and then branded 7 of their coaches on the route with back and both side route branding, creating brand recognition, another thing that GoBE had failed to do. In the end GoBe was forced to raise prices and substantially cut back it's timetable within several months of launch.
Since then First invested in a fleet of 10 new coaches in 2014 exclusively for the route and added a further 3 in 2016 all branded up for the route and whilst GoBE have re-added some services, First are still the clear winners on the route and despite running 18 times a day in each direction are still needing reliefs at peak time due to passenger numbers and the base fare for the route is still only €1 more expensive than it was at launch.
I see someone giving up soon .I just think First will fight this one .Lets see if they are any new coaches on order.
This is a different route to most other routes in the Irish Republic because it is international and there are a lot of different things which operators can do in relation to timetabling and operation of routes that cannot be done on routes within the country which are subject to oversight by the national regulator.
They set up the Belfast Express route in 2012, they previously ran a stopping service until 2010 which they axed because of intense competition from both the train and Bus Eireann and Translink, but the Express route was started up from pretty much nothing, from outside the Europa Bus station in Belfast, for the first year or so it was really not doing that much trade.
However it was somewhat or a ground-breaker on the route as to the fact it operated 24 hours a day and all year round. Translink ran a non stop service in the summer but it wasn't that many times a day and ran very infrequently in Winter, Aircoach operated from 2012 and still operate services 22 times a day in each direction and in 2014 it started to pick up the pace and in 2015 and 2016 especially it started to perform well.
During late 2015 and early 2016 they upgraded the vehicles on the Belfast route from 44 seat 2004 Setra vehicles to 53 seat 2009 Jonckheere SHV Tri-Axles due to increasing demand and those vehicles are currently in the process of getting a light refurbishment with USB sockets being added in to the coaches, with new vehicles for Belfast said to be arriving sometime in the second half of the year.
However with the competition operating 2017 Tourismo's with toilets, it remains to be seen if that will be sufficient or quick enough response to stop passengers going from city to city on the competition, even after they add the USP of charging sockets to their existing coaches in a cut throat price war where the competition are selling fares which are going to be unsustainable after a short while, to date, whilst Aircoach has cut it's fares in response it has not gone close to matching the ultra cheap fare of £8/€10 return.
If you add to the story that the boss of the competition is the person who founded Aircoach before First bought it, you have another interesting narrative aspect of this war, since whilst he first agreed to stay on at the company, he left a little while after First took control.
