Aer Lingus passenger levels fall 5% as short haul suffers

Total passenger numbers at Aer Lingus fell 5% on an annualised basis in November, with the airline not anticipating any improvement on short-haul routes before the end of the year.

Aer Lingus’s latest monthly traffic statistics, published yesterday, showed that a total of 728,000 people flew with the airline in November, as opposed to 766,000 in the same month of last year.

A breakdown of the figures shows a 4.7% year-on-year decline in short-haul passengers to 647,000, a figure that includes the Aer Lingus Regional service, which is operated by Aer Arann. However, the latter service — on its own — saw a 1.2% year-on-year rise in passenger numbers to 87,000.

Long-haul passenger numbers, for November, show a near 7% annualised fall to 81,000, meanwhile.

Overall, the outcome was in line with Aer Lingus’ management’s expectations. Early last month, as part of its third-quarter trading update, the airline stated, with regard to its short-term outlook: “We do not expect any improvement in the short-haul environment for the rest of 2013, which remains characterised by heavily discounted fare offerings across Europe.”

However, it added: “The 2013 outlook on long-haul remains positive, with the exception of some weakness expected in November.”

“These stats are in line with our expectations and we would expect the trends to normalise in December with long haul returning to growth, but short haul remaining under some pressure,” Donal O’Neill of Goodbody Stockbrokers said yesterday.

Mainline load factor — which measures how many seats were filled on its flights — was down by 3.3 percentage points to 73.3%, with short-haul capacity down by 3.5%.

The fact that the Aer Lingus Regional was the one aspect of the business to show annualised passenger growth in November, was significant, given that the updated figures were released a day after the announcement of the regional division’s expansion of services at Shannon Airport.

On Wednesday, it was announced that the service was expecting to up passenger numbers through Shannon to 200,000 by the end of next year and to 240,000 by the end of 2015 on the back of new and expanded routes. Expanded services to Manchester and Birmingham and a new route to Bristol were also announced.