Aer Lingus has decided to suspend its Washington service due to low demand in Ireland and America.

The airline said it would resume the service next summer when demand picked up.

The decision is likely to prove unpopular in the Shannon region because many of the Washington flights formed part of the Shannon stopover.

The flights end on December 1st of this year.

A company statement said: "Customers who have purchased tickets to travel during the period from December 1st until May 8th 2005 will be offered a full refund. Alternatively, Aer Lingus will make every effort to re-accommodate customers on alternative services. The airline will be in contact with these customers within the next few days".

The airline's US winter services from December will be limited to Los Angeles, Boston, New York and Chicago.

Aer Lingus is not allowed offer scheduled services to other cities in the United States because of the terms of a US-Ireland bilateral agreement.

However in a separate announcement the airline said it would operate a new charter service to Orlando from Dublin.

The airline will offer three flights a week from early December.

It is the first direct route operated by the airline to Florida.

The company said there was demand for the Orlando route because Florida had grown in popularity as "a winter sun destination for leisure, golf and touring, in addition to satisfying the demand for direct access from the increasing number of Irish home owners in Florida."

The airline's chief operations officer, Mr Seamus Kearney, said: "We believe there is a very strong potential demand for direct transatlantic winter travel to Florida."

The airline will use an Airbus 330-200 aircraft which can carry 275 passengers on the service to McCoy International Airport in Orlando. Days of operation are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Despite the decision to end the Washington service for winter, the airline remains interested in serving more airports in the US under a revised US-Ireland bilateral.

Earlier this week, the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, said he supported moves to revise the bilateral agreement and said Cork might be one of the first airports to benefit.

The chief executive of Aer Lingus, Mr Willie Walsh, has also spoken on several occasions of transferring the airline's low fares model to the transatlantic.

He told a Dáil committee several months ago that while Aer Lingus was the low fares carrier of the transatlantic, more could be done to bring fares down.

The airline has also spoken of serving long haul destinations like South Africa, but no decision has been taken on this.

Meanwhile negotiations to reduce staff numbers by 1,325 continue, with talks with unions expected to stretch into next month.