AER LINGUS yesterday beefed up its board by appointing Montie Brewer and Nicola Shaw as independent, non-executive directors.

This brings to 13 the number of people currently serving on the Aer Lingus board.

Mr Brewer is a director with Las Vegas-based Allegiant Travel Company. Low-cost Allegiant flies from small cities to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa.

He was president and chief executive of Air Canada from 2004 until he parted company with the airline at the end of March last year.

Air Canada made a loss of just more than one billion Canadian dollars in 2008 and it underwent a major restructuring under his successor Calin Rovinescu.

Mr Brewer had joined Air Canada in 2002 as executive vice-president of commercial.

He previously served with United Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Republic Airlines, Braniff and Trans World Airlines.

Mr Brewer is credited with helping to set up the Star global airline alliance, which numbers Air Canada, United and Lufthansa among its members.

He has planned and developed more than 20 hub operations worldwide and managed a low-cost airline for United.

Ms Shaw runs FirstGroup’s bus division in the UK, Ireland and Germany. This includes Aircoach in Ireland.

She is a graduate of both Oxford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and began work as a planner with London Underground before transferring to the World Bank for a year in 1995.

She then joined Halcrow Fox, the consulting engineers for public transport, working in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi.

Ms Shaw has also worked for the Office of Rail Regulation and the Strategic Rail Authority in Britain.

She was tipped to one day take the top job at FirstGroup, a listed British company that also has a large rail division and operations in the United States.