Aer Lingus to seek 100 redundancies

Aer Lingus has announced a voluntary redundancy programme which will aim to reduce staff numbers by 100 by the end of this year.

The airline said the cost saving initiative was necessary in order to protect profitability, despite reporting a 3.3 per cent increase in revenues to €259.7 million for the first three months of the year.

The operating loss at the airline increased by €9.4 million to €45.5 million compared with the first three months of 2012. The first quarter of the year is seasonally loss-making for airlines.

Aer Lingus said the loss could be explained by the start-up costs for the “wet-lease” arrangement with Virgin in the UK, planned changes to the long haul fleet, and slightly weaker trading on UK routes.

The airline said higher fuel, airport charges and one-off costs had also impacted on profits.

Aer Lingus chief executive Christoph Mueller said that while the airline had expected increased costs in the first quarter, the rising operating losses "highlights the need to continue to review our cost base to protect profitability for the rest of 2013 and beyond".

“While there are challenges ahead, we are committed to continuing the profitable growth of our business,” he said.

“In line with the ongoing requirement to streamline our organisation structure and identify cost saving initiatives, we are launching a voluntary severance programme, with a goal of reducing headcount by approximately 100 staff by year end.”

The airline carried 2.2 per cent more passengers in the first three months of the year compared to the same period in 2012, while revenue per seat was 6.5 per cent higher.

The overall yield per passenger increased by 3.7 per cent, with long haul yields performing particularly strongly, increasing by 5.6 per cent.

Looking ahead to the rest of the fiscal year, Aer Lingus said it expects profits to be similar to 2012, which amounted to €69.1 million before exceptional items.

Aer Lingus has recently begun operating services on behalf of Virgin Atlantic on routes between London Heathrow and Manchester, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

They have also announced extensions to their interline and codeshare agreements with Etihad Airways, Jetblue and United Airlines, and agreed damp-lease of three Boeing 757 aircraft to operate on North Atlantic services starting in early 2014.