The Aer Lingus Group (Including Aer Lingus Regional) announced that it carried 970,000 passengers in May up 2.4% with a load factor of 76.2% up 2.9%. In the short-haul segment it carried 793,000 passengers down 1.1% with a load factor of 73.8% up 0.9% with revenue passenger kilometres down 0.4% to 895 million on available seat kilometres down 1.6%.

In the long-haul segment it carried 89,000 passengers up 12.7% with a load factor of 81.5% up 7.4% with revenue RPK’S up 10.5% on ASK up 0.5%. The strong performance of the long-haul operation reflect the success of its business model with multiple partnerships and the ability to feed connecting over it’s Dublin base offsetting the on-going weakness in domestic demand.

Aer Lingus Regional carried 88,000 passengers up 33.3% and year to date have carried 351,000 passengers and as usual figures exclude traffic carried on the United Airlines Joint-Venture Washington Dulles to Madrid route.

Compared to the Association of European Airlines (mainly so-called legacy carriers) as a whole, the Aer Lingus passenger load factor was in line on short-haul routes (73.8% v.74.2%) and lower on the North Atlantic routes (81.5% v. 86.2%).

                                                      

Ryanair announced that it carried 7.51 million passengers in May up 5% with a load factor of 81% down 1% and year to date it has carried 76.6 million passengers.

                              Irish Aviation Research Institute © 13th June 2012