Only one of these expensive ads was ever broadcast and it was aired only once, on September 10, 2001.
The next day, the course of the airline industry was altered for ever. The fallout from the terrorist attacks on America pushed Aer Lingus close to bankruptcy.
The tragedy also finally ended a troubled Aer Lingus run towards a stock market flotation.
Four high-profile investment banks were hired to sell the airline to investors. PR consultants were selected, a special data room was established and a draft prospectus drawn up.
The minister for transport, energy and communications at the time, Mary O’Rourke, who oversaw the flotation of Eircom, enthusiastically endorsed the sale in robust Oireachtas debates.
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A series of events conspired to unravel the flotation plans: trade union unrest over pay and conditions resulted in a number of work stoppages; foot and mouth disease decimated tourist numbers; and business traffic dropped sharply as the technology downturn started to bite.
In May 2001, the chief executive, Michael Foley, headhunted from Heineken in America to guide the company to the market, dramatically resigned after two female employees accused him of sexual harassment.
Four months later, the chairman, Bernie Cahill, died in a boating accident in west Cork. Eircom shares, which were flying high at the time of the original decision to sell Aer Lingus, had begun their steady decline. And then came September 11.
“It wasn’t pulled,” one former senior manager said of the Aer Lingus flotation that never happened. “It simply got buried.”
In a fortnight’s time, investor roadshows will begin as the state tries to revive the sale of the national airline. There will be no fancy television ads. With the Dail in recess, there will also be no political debates.
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Retail investors will have to stump up at least €10,000 to participate, and shares will only be sold through stockbroking firms.
The vast bulk of the €500m in new equity that the airline hopes to raise in the flotation will be sourced from financial institutions, at home and abroad.
Dermot Mannion, the Aer Lingus chief executive, will have a job selling the airline in a hostile trading environment. Though nothing compared to the calamitous events of 2001, fresh security concerns, high oil prices, increased competition from Ryanair, and a stalled agreement with America on liberalisation of air services present no shortage of challenges.
Asked whether Aer Lingus has the form for a successful flotation this time, Andrew Lobbenberg, a renowned airline analyst with ABN Amro, says: “It’s been a stunning turnaround. The question is to what extent can it be continued or can growth be driven forward.”
Only time will tell if Aer Lingus Privatisation: The Sequel will be a hit or not.
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The biggest threat to a successful Aer Lingus flotation arguably comes from its nearest rival, Ryanair, headquartered a couple of hundred yards from its head office.
“I have a policy of not commenting on small regional airlines and their plans to float,” joked Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair chief executive, this weekend.
The low-cost airline laun-ched 12 new routes out of Dublin earlier this month, throwing down a direct challenge to Aer Lingus.
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“Our European traffic out of Dublin will double over the next 12 months,” said O’Leary.
“These 12 new routes are all the extra capacity we can put on until Pier D opens in 2007.”
The clear inference is that O’Leary’s attack on Aer Lingus’s home base has only just begun. It also highlights that the congestion at Dublin airport will limit Ryanair’s growth in the short term.
Routes to the continent have been the engine of the Aer Lingus revival, driving the average growth of passenger numbers to 9% in the past three years.
The airline now has a 43% share of all seats flown between Ireland and continental Europe. Ryanair has just a 32% share.
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In total, the pair fly into the same airport on just 13 routes, and the same city on a further 10.
Of the 50 routes in the Aer Lingus short-haul network, there is no overlap with Ryanair on 27 routes.
Far from being a negative, Aer Lingus will plug its 20 years of competing head to head with Ryanair as a positive to potential investors.
Noel O’Halloran, chief investment officer at KBC Asset Management in Dublin, highlighted the fact that Aer Lingus’ operating margin is 8%, which is less than half the 22% of Ryanair, “but it is significantly above EasyJet (5%) and Air Berlin (-6%)”.
The dominance of Ryanair and Aer Lingus is also a deterrent to other operators coming into the Irish market, analysts say. Aer Lingus and Ryanair dominate the key 6.30-9am landing slots in Dublin.
EasyJet, Go, and MyTravel have all exited or retreated from the Republic of Ireland market since 2002 after brief forays.
There may be a hint of a phoney war developing. Lobbenberg viewed the launch of Ryanair’s Madrid route, moving to compete directly against Aer Lingus, as “a splendid piece of mischief-making”.
Other seasoned observers agree. “They have coexisted very well in the past,” said one observer. “He [O’Leary] would probably see [Aer Lingus] as a bit of a buffer.”
Competition over the transatlantic might be less cosy. Aer Lingus earns at least one third of its annual profits of €72m from transatlantic routes, a lower proportion than a decade ago, but still a high percentage.
Since his arrival from the Emirates Group last year, Mannion has been identified strongly with long-haul expansion and the potential for growth both to the east and west. “It is a key part of our investment case,” he said last week.
Developing new routes to America is conditional on an open skies agreement between the US government and the European Commission. Mannion hoped that Aer Lingus would get the green light for four new American routes by November, just two months after the flotation. The airline booked two Airbus A330 aircraft for delivery in May 2007 to service the new routes, expected to serve San Francisco, Orlando and Washington (Dulles).
However, a breakdown in open skies talks means that negotiations on these new routes will now be put back to March 2007 at the earliest. Some sources speculated last week that it could take three years for an agreement to be hammered out.
Mannion insisted that Aer Lingus will “put a plan B in place”, and, in the absence of new American destinations, he will use the aircraft to increase capacity on existing transatlantic routes, probably into JFK, New York. “We’re quite happy with that,” he said.
However, it is far from an ideal alternative, particularly as there are no restrictions on American airlines flying the routes that Mannion planned. Under the current agreement, American airlines can fly from any airport in the US to Ireland, but Aer Lingus is restricted to four gateways in America.
Potential investors will also expect an update on the airline’s service to Dubai, Aer Lingus’ only non-transatlantic long-haul route.
A source close to the airline says that pick-up has been “disappointing” on the route. Launched last March, it has posted load factors of 50-60%. The airline is backing a bounce in winter bookings as temperatures cool in the gulf.
Inevitably, during the roadshow, there will be comparisons between Mannion and his predecessor, Willie Walsh, now chief executive at British Airways. “He avoids saying what he knows would be unwelcome,” said a company insider. “So when he does say something, people sit up and take notice. Willie was more direct.”
Mannion believes that the pay deal completed with unions just weeks ago will have a big bearing on the future profitability of the airline. It includes reduced crew complements and a fly-anywhere agreement where the distinction between transatlantic and short-haul crews are lifted.
The fear, however, is that pay concessions in the deal will bring Aer Lingus back to a situation where profits were dissipated in wage deals that made the company uncompetitive.
“There can be no going back to the old days,” said the company insider. “What is going to sell airline seats is low fares, and to deliver low fares, you must have low costs.”
In a 2002 interview, the famed investor Warren Buffett said: “I have an 800 number now that I call if I get the urge to buy an airline stock. I call at two in the morning and I say: ‘My name is Warren and I’m an aeroholic.’ And then they talk me down.”
There will be aeroholics willing to back Aer Lingus. Appetite from local investors for the float is expected to be mixed, and there is speculation among fund managers on whether it will be priced low and to go.
“I’m not particularly interested in it being priced cheaply,” said O’Halloran of KBC. “We want to make sure that the stock goes up in value so we can make some money out of it. Shares that are priced cheaply often don’t do that.”
“This is a real business making real money and it’s been around a long time,” said another potential investor. “It has hedged its fuel requirement better than Ryanair, and it has done a much better job than most European carriers on cost. And the Irish economy is flying.”
Barring unforeseen events, then, the airline will float. “Everything is on schedule,” said Mannion last week.
After the events of 2001, he must hope he’s not be tempting fate.