Numbers game

One More Thing:Aer Lingus's announcement this week that it plans to double the size of its long-haul fleet over the next seven years will no doubt have brought some relief at the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA).

Aer Lingus will be the biggest customer of Terminal 2, the DAA's €607 million project aimed at relieving the chronic congestion at Dublin airport.

The DAA's proposals for the terminal are largely based around Aer Lingus's expansion plans, particularly its plans to open a raft of new routes to the United States.

The terminal will be about 1.5 times the size of the current facility at Dublin airport, yet will handle 11.5 million passengers, roughly half the amount that uses the existing terminal building.

The DAA is building big to cope with early morning peak-time demand of 4,200 (predominantly Aer Lingus) passengers an hour.

It is understood that Aer Lingus actually wanted the DAA to factor in a peak-time demand of 5,000 passengers an hour.

Aer Lingus's announcement is timely for the DAA, as the airport manager seeks to persuade the aviation regulator, Cathal Guiomard, to allow it to recoup its outlay on the terminal as quickly as possible.

Guiomard last month issued a draft decision that no price increase would be granted before 2010. His report also suggested that the DAA's peak-time passenger forecasts were "optimistic" and estimated that just more than 3,000 passengers an hour would use the new terminal at peak times. As a result, the regulator said the appropriate size would be 54,000sq m, rather than the 75,500sq m proposed by the DAA.

He ruled that the DAA should recoup 70 per cent of its costs from all airport users once the terminal has opened and 30 per cent whenever the airport hits its target throughput of 30 million.

Needless to say, the DAA was none too pleased at the decision and faces having to find at least €152 million from other sources.

Now that Aer Lingus has taken the cover off its plans to double its long-haul fleet, the DAA is likely to move swiftly to try to persuade Guiomard to tweak his numbers in advance of publishing a definitive decision in late July.