AER LINGUS’S recent dispute with its cabin crew and subsequent flight cancellations resulted in about 22,000 passengers who had booked to fly in January not being carried by the airline.
Aer Lingus had 552,000 “booked” passengers in January, a year-on-year decline of 17 per cent.
It said the number of passengers carried was 4 per cent below this figure due to flight cancellations. This means it carried about 530,000 passengers last month.
The drop in booked passenger numbers reflects a reduction in capacity on some routes and the migration of certain routes to Aer Lingus Regional Services, which is operated on a franchise basis by Aer Arann and is not included in the company’s traffic statistics.
Aer Lingus’s total load factor – or seats filled on each aircraft – was 63.8 per cent last month compared with 67.4 in January 2010.
Short-haul passenger numbers declined in January by 17.1 per cent annually to 504,000. The load factor on short-haul fell to 62.8 per cent last month from 67.6 per cent in January 2010.
Capacity on short-haul flights was 15.2 per cent lower as a result of the industrial dispute with the Impact cabin crew union and planned reductions at Belfast, London Gatwick and Cork.
On transatlantic routes, Aer Lingus had 48,000 booked passengers in January compared with 57,000 a year earlier. The load factor on flights to the US declined to 65.7 per cent from 67 per cent.
The long-haul numbers were affected by the cabin crew dispute, the removal of Shannon-New York services in the month and weather-related disruptions.
Aer Lingus’s services were due to return to normal today after the airline and cabin crew agreed to end the dispute last Friday following lengthy talks at the Labour Relations Commission.
Two flights did not operate yesterday – one from New York to Dublin and the other in the opposite direction. These flights had been cancelled some days ago, with passengers offered alternative travel arrangements.
More than 300 members of cabin crew had been removed from the payroll by Aer Lingus management for refusing to operate controversial new rosters. A number of other staff faced disciplinary meetings which could have resulted in dismissal.