New aircraft and services bring more passengers

Passenger numbers:Aer Lingus carried 5.3 million passengers in the first seven months of this year, an increase of 6.7 per cent on the same period of 2006.

In spite of this increase, fewer people were carried on each flight, a reflection of increases in capacity on both its short- and long-haul routes.

Aer Lingus said its load factor for the seven-month period was 76.4 per cent, a year-on-year decline of 1.8 percentage points.

The biggest decline was on its long-haul services, which comprise flights to the United States and Dubai. The load factor on these routes declined from 80.2 per cent to 78.1 per cent.

On short-haul services, the percentage of seats filled on each flight declined by 1.4 points to 75 per cent.

Aer Lingus said it carried 4.6 million passengers on short-haul routes, an increase of 7 per cent. These services are to the UK and continental Europe. Its long-haul routes recorded 674,000 passengers, up 4.7 per cent on the same period of 2006.

Chief executive Dermot Mannion said the record passenger numbers reflect a "robust performance in a period of significant capacity increases".

In July, Aer Lingus carried 919,000 passengers, up 10.5 per cent on the same month last year.

This was helped by the introduction of two new aircraft to its short-haul fleet, which helped it to increase its capacity by 11 per cent year on year.

Aer Lingus has launched five new services this year - Cork to Manchester, and flights from Dublin to Santiago de Compostela, Athens, Vilnius and Washington DC.