Aer Lingus passenger traffic rises

Traffic at Aer Lingus rose by 4.3 per cent in March, with both short and long haul passengers showing a rise over the year, the airline said today.

A total of 844,000 passengers flew with the Aer Lingus mainline and Aer Lingus Regional services last month.

On the mainline services, 757,000 passengers flew during the month, a rise of 2.9 per cent. Some 83,000 were on long haul services, which showed a 13.7 per cent change compared with 2012. Short haul routes added an additional 11,000 passengers year on year, at 674,000.

Load factor on the main airline was 4.1 points higher last month at 79.9 per cent, with long haul increasing 2.4 points to 84.4 per cent as capacity increased 9.5 per cent. Short haul load factor rose 4.7 points compared to last year, at 77.3 per cent, but capacity fell 7 per cent

However, in the year to date, Aer Lingus’s mainline services showed a fall off of 0.5 per cent in passenger figures to 1.724 million.

Aer Lingus Regional passenger traffic rose by 19.2 per cent year on year to 87,000, with total passengers to date in 2013 up by 21.7 per cent to 224,000.