Aer Lingus has said its total booked passenger numbers in December, including its Aer Lingus Regional operations, rose by 13% to 702,000 from 621,000 the same month the previous year.
However, the airline said that the December 2010 figures were impacted by the poor weather conditions, which led to flight combinations and cancellations and to customers holding multiple bookings due to significant disruptions to scheduled operations.
The airline's booked passenger numbers in December 2011 rose by 11.5% to 638,000 from 572,000 the same time the previous year. Its short-haul passengers increased by 13.9% to 574,000 from 504,000 but its long-haul numbers fell by 5.9% to 64,000 from 68,000.
Its load factor - or how many seats it fills on each flight - decreased by 6.2 percentage points to 68.4% from 74.6%.
For 2011 as a whole, total passenger numbers excluding regional were up just 0.5% from 2010 to 9.76 million. The load factor fell 1.4 points to 76.4%.
Meanwhile, Ryanair says it carried 76.4 million passengers last year, up 5% from 72.7 million in 2010.
Its busiest day was Friday August 12, when more than 280,000 flew on Ryanair flights.
