Whilst I would welcome the takeover in principle, I feel that Virgin Atlantic should also get an opportunity to be able to bid for at least a few of these slots too

Do you not think MOL would have done this? He probably played BA & VS off of each other to get the most money from the slots, and unsurprisingly, BA won the bid.

But I don’t really see why FR want EI? EI is hardly big competition, despite it being the home territory, Ireland makes up a fraction of FR’s revenue.

If the deal does go through (and I doubt it will), I expect FR will be forced to continue operating the long haul EI routes by the Irish government. I expect they’ll want to keep the transport links with key global markets (eg US).