Aer Lingus says it carried just over one million passengers in July, the first time it has topped that mark in one month. The figure was up 8% on the same month last year.
The airline's load factor - or percentage of seats filled - was down only marginally at 83.3% from 84% in July 2007 despite an increase of almost 9% in total capacity.
Short-haul passenger numbers were up almost 10% on a year earlier, while the load factor on these routes rose marginally to 85.2% despite a 13.7% increase in capacity.
But on longer routes, passenger numbers were down 2.3% and load factor fell 1.7 points to 81%. Capacity on these routes was up 3.4% in the period.
For the first seven months of this year, passenger numbers are running almost 10% ahead of the same period last year at just under 6.15 million and load factors are down 4.7 points at 74.4%.
