Aer Lingus announced that it carried 638,000 passengers in December up 13% with a load factor of 68.4% down 6.2%. The airline carried 64,000 long-haul passengers down 5.9% with a load factor of 69.5% down 7.1% on capacity up 5.6%, and it carried 574,000 short-haul passengers up 14% with a load factor of 67.7% down 5.5% on a 22.8% increase in capacity.
Aer Lingus Regional carried 64,000 passengers up 30.6% and in 2011 it carried a total of 790,000 passengers up 84.1%.
The Aer Lingus traffic stats where impacted by year-year on comparison due to December 2010 Snow impact which adversely impacted operations, and exclude traffic carried on the United Airlines Joint-Venture route Washington Dulles to Madrid
Interestingly Aer Lingus carried a total of 9.755 million passengers in 2011 up 0.5% which is a positive development given the extremely difficult conditions in its home market.
Ryanair announced that it carried 4.8 million passengers in December down 5% with a load factor of 79% down 1% and it carried a total of 76.4 million passengers in 2011.
Irish Aviation Research Institute © 9th January 2012 All Rights Reserved.