A SENIOR Aer Lingus executive has quit the company to work for Ryanair, it emerged last night. Mr Conor McCarthy, the chief operations officer with Aer Lingus' commuter service, will become Director of Operations at Ryanair.

Ryanair said yesterday that he had experience in marketing, maintenance and engineering, operations, finance and strategic planning. He was central to Aer Lingus' introduction of new Airbus A330 planes.

In recent months, Mr McCarthy is understood to have had responsibility within Aer Lingus for a project known as Aer Lingus Express, which would compete with Ryanair on short hop flights, mainly to and from Britain.

The concept was first mooted in Aer Lingus' 1993 strategic plan, but although a number of studies have been carried out there has been no decision to launch the service.

Reacting to the loss of Mr McCarthy to a competitor, a spokesman for Aer Lingus said: "He made a career decision."