Aer Lingus passengers decline

Aer Lingus passenger numbers fell in the first month of the year as the airline felt the impact of flight cancellations during January.

The company said its booked passengers were down 17 per cent to 552,000 for January, but due to cancelled services the number of passengers actually carried during the month was 4 per cent per cent lower than this figure.

The number of passengers booked to fly on Aer Lingus's short haul flights was down 17.1 per cent compared to last year, at 504,000, Long haul booked passengers totalled 48,000, a fall of 15.8 per cent.

The airline's load factor, a measure of how full its planes are, was down 3.6 points on January 2010 to 63.8 per cent. This was felt in both short and long haul routes, with short haul load factor falling 4.8 points to 62.8 per cent as capacity fell due to the industrial dispute with cabin crew and planned reductions at Belfast, London Gatwick and Cork.

Long haul booked load factor was down 1.3 points to 65.7 per cent, with capacity falling by 14.2 per cent.

Aer Lingus last week resolved a two-week dispute with cabin crew over rosters, which caused disruption for thousands of passengers and saw more than 300 staff removed from the payroll. The airline was forced to lease aircraft and crew from other airlines in a bid to keep its schedules running, but numerous flights were cancelled over the course of the dispute.

The dispute also had a negative effect on bookings during the dispute.

However, analysts do not expect any further adverse effect from the resolution to the row.

"As expected, Aer Lingus continues to reduce capacity in the typically loss-making winter season to better match demand. However, this has been accentuated in the January traffic statistics due to weather-related disruptions and cabin crew industrial action," Davy analyst Joshua Goldman wrote in a note.

"We applaud both parties for coming to a relatively quick resolution to the industrial dispute and do not foresee any material future negative financial impact due to the most recent agreement."

Today's figures do not include traffic from Aer Lingus's venture with Aer Arann, which operates under the banner Aer Lingus Regional. Bloxham analsysts said this omission would "distort" the data.

"January is the weakest yield month of the year so we argue the resolution of the cabin crew dispute outweighs the adverse effects of reduced volume during January," Bloxham said in a note this morning.

Shares in Aer Lingus were up 1.3 per cent this afternoon on the Dublin market, trading at €1.07 shortly before 3pm.