Aer Lingus October traffic down slightly
Friday, 6 November 2009 14:09Aer Lingus passenger traffic figures for October show that its passenger numbers on shorter routes are holding up, but the numbers on long-haul routes continue to drop.
The airline says it carried 902,000 passengers in October, a drop of 0.2% compared with the same month last year.
The number of people travelling on shorter routes rose by 3.3% to 821,000, but the figure for longer routes showed a drop of 25.7% to 81,000.
The overall load factor, or percentage of seats filled, was 74.6% in October, up 1.3 points from the same month last year. The load factor on shorter routes was little changed at 77%, while the figure for long-haul routes rose 1.3 points to 70.1%.
During the year, Aer Lingus increased its capacity on short-haul routes by 6%, but cut routes and flights on its longer routes by more than 30%.
For the first 10 months of 2009, total passenger numbers are running 2.4% ahead at just under 9.2 million, while the load factor is up 1.4 points to 76.4%.
Aer Lingus shares were up three cent (5.7%) at 56 cent in Dublin this afternoon.
