Aer Lingus has today reported operating profits of €139m for the third quarter of 2022, a strong improvement on the loss of €95m for the first six months of the year.
However, the airline's profits are still down compared to the same busy summer quarter of 2019 before the Covid pandemic.
Aer Lingus said that despite the improved performance, global and geopolitical forces causing higher oil prices, exchange rate fluctuation and rising interest rates continue to substantially increase the cost base of airlines.
Aer Lingus chief executive Lynne Embleton said the performance reflects a welcome strength in leisure demand after the ending of the highly restricted travel environment in Ireland which led to significant losses in 2020 and 2021.
"We anticipated the return of demand for leisure travel once Covid restrictions were removed and planned an ambitious summer schedule which delivered a much-needed strong summer after a difficult two years," the CEO said.
"There was a strong resumption in outbound and inbound leisure travel this summer as we operated almost 90% of our 2019 levels of capacity," she said.
"We are now entering the winter season - a period where non-leisure bookings made closer to the day of travel are more important," she added.
Ms Embleton said the progress the airline has made in the third quarter and its view of the rest of the year will bring Aer Lingus to a position of small profitability for the full year.
But she added that the profits would be considerably below the full year profitability seen in 2019.
In today's results statement, Aer Lingus said it is progressing with its North American expansion plans, growing the number of transatlantic routes from and through its Dublin hub.
"We will operate 19 transatlantic routes in Summer 2023 with Miami having returned this month and Cleveland and Hartford, Connecticut added to the Aer Lingus transatlantic route network from next summer," the Aer Lingus CEO said.
Ms Embleton told Morning Ireland that the third trading quarter performance was "very welcome" after the loss of €95m it had reported for the first half of the year.
Ms Embleton said just "a handful" of customers remained to be compensated after the recent massive IT outage across its systems on September 10 that resulted in thousands of passengers missing flights at Dublin airport.
She would not divulge how much had been paid out in compensation but she said 'it was in the millions'.
Asked if she could definitively rule out a cyber-attack, she said "absolutely. This was a cable problem."
"It was an exceptional turn of events. A network cable was damaged during construction in the UK. Remarkably, the backup system - that our top tier supplier had - also failed," she explained.
"That combination of events led to the significant outage on the Saturday. We've been in contact with our supplier and they've put the resilience in place and have assured us it won't happen again," she explained.
The Aer Lingus CEO said the airline was in dialogue with the company about compensation.
She said there had not been further IT problems at the airline after that incident.
"Our systems have been stable. The big issue was on the 10th. It was sudden. We lost all systems and they were back up on Saturday teatime and we recovered for the next day and beyond," she concluded.
