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After the euphoria and celebrations that marked the Aer Lingus 75th anniversary the past month or so has seen the usual market ups and downs that the airline has to face as it tries to come to grips with fuel price volatility, the virtual meltdown in its home market's economy, weak growth and challenges in many of its key markets and competition on its doorstep from what is arguably one of the most successful low cost airlines in existence. A competitor that is also one of its major shareholders. Added to this is the task of trying to cut costs and implement a restructuring programme with predicable staff opposition and threats of industrial action and it is no wonder that its latest traffic statistics for June 2011 published on 7th July show total booked passengers at 925,000 were down 1.7% compared to June 2010. Booked passenger numbers were negatively impacted in particular by uncertainty over scheduled services caused by the threat of industrial action by pilots’ trade union IALPA-IMPACT.

Short haul booked passenger numbers in June were 837,000, a 1.4% decrease on the previous year while long haul booked passengers were 88,000, a 4.3% decrease over the same period. The long haul numbers do not include traffic carried on the Washington Dulles – Madrid codeshare service operated in partnership with United Airlines. Booked load factor decreased by 2.1 points to 80.0%. Short haul booked load factor was 78.6%, a decrease of 1.1% on June 2010, with capacity increasing by 1.5%. Long haul booked load factor was 83.1%, a decrease of 4.1%, with capacity increasing by 0.5%. Aer Lingus Regional’s total booked passenger numbers in June 2011 were 70,000, an increase of 70.7% compared to June 2010.

Route developments.

Aer Lingus announced a number of new routes for the winter, including a new service from Cork to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, which will operate once weekly, beginning 30th October. Other new services includes three weekly flights from Cork to Barcelona; a twice weekly service from Cork to Rome; four weekly flights from Dublin to Milan Malpensa, an expansion of the service to Stuttgart to four weekly flights from Dublin and twice weekly services from Belfast to both Rome and Alicante. Aer Lingus will now offer six European destinations from Belfast International Airport, the destinations being London, Rome, Tenerife and Malaga. In addition, Aer Lingus Regional will continue to provide a wide range of service to the U.K., with flights from Dublin to Aberdeen and Bristol being extended into the winter months. Flights from Shannon to Edinburgh also will be extended to operate through the winter.

Fleet developments.

A few aims of Aer Lingus’ recovery plan has been to match capacity to demand. In the process the airline has cut capacity 14%, including scaling back its London Gatwick base which was to be the basis for major expansion. On the Atlantic it has boosted yields after cutting its long-haul operations by a quarter and has returned this part of the business to profit. Some Airbus A.330s and A321s have left the fleet and A320s added, most recently EI-DVN on 24th May which brought the number of A320s in service to 34. The short haul fleet also includes the remaining three A321s. In a move that was not previously signalled in advance Aer Lingus entered into an agreement with RBS Aviation Capital for the lease of four Airbus A319-111s which are coming off lease from the Spanish carrier Iberia. Two of them will enter service with the airline next year, with the remaining two joining the fleet in 2013. Although not for handover to Aer Lingus until early 2012 and entry into service in March, the first aircraft EI-EPR arrived from Madrid in the mid afternoon of 1st July using its registration as callsign. The aircraft formerly EC-KEV of Iberia, was registered to RBS Aerospace the previous day and arrived in full Aer Lingus colours having been painted in Madrid. On arrival she was entered Hangar 6 and is due to remain in storage until her service entry. EC-KEV first flew on 12th June 2007 and was delivered to Iberia later that month on 21st June. She is configured with 122 seats, (44 business and 78 economy) total which Iberia have and apparently Aer Lingus are to retain them in that configuration. The A319s are very similar in basic specification to A320s, EI-EDP and EI-EDS, which are also leased from RBS and which were built to Iberia specifications. The other three A319s being delivered from RBS are EC-KME which will become EI-EPS and is due for delivery in late 2011 for service entry in January 2012, EC-KBJ which will become EI-EPT, and EC-KDI which will become EI-EPU, with the latter two for delivery in 2013. The first A319 to be handed over to Aer Lingus was actually the second to come off lease from Iberia.

and finally.....

Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin based IMAGE Publications has won a contract to publish Aer Lingus’ in-flight magazine Cara. IMAGE Publications was launched in 1975 with IMAGE magazine. It rapidly became Ireland’s leading women’s glossy, outselling all UK and Irish rivals. Over the years, it has grown from strength to strength. It is owned by Ann Reihill, Robert Power and Image’s MD Richard Power. Cara will be edited by IMAGE Magazine’s former Travel and Features Editor Frances Power and will include the usual mix of travel, arts, design, fashion, sport and business. The first issue of Cara produced by Image Publications will be in in-flight pockets from 1st August.