Aer Lingus cuts number of Belfast flights

Aer Lingus is cutting flights out of Belfast and Dublin this winter as it fights to cope with the economic downturn and a fall in passengers.

In Belfast – where the Irish airline set up its first UK regional hub in December 2007 – the number of aircraft operating out of the International Airport will be reduced from three to two for four months until the beginning of March 2010.

Its routes will be cut down to London Heathrow, Malaga, Munich, Lanzarote and Tenerife which is being added for next winter.

Routes currently being enjoyed which will not operate during the winter include Paris, Rome, Milan, Faro and Barcelona.

However the airline’s commercial director Enda Corneille gave a guarantee to the 100 pilots and cabin staff employed in Belfast that their jobs were safe.

“We have no plans for job cuts,” he said.

At least one aircraft is also being taken out of service in Dublin, but which routes will be affected have yet to be decided, he said.

Mr Corneille said: “We are still committed to Northern Ireland, we still have a huge amount of confidence in the routes, in the network, in the base, but we need to cut our cloth to our means for the winter.

“At a time when customer confidence is at an all-time low and you have finite resources, you have to deploy them where they will generate the most return.”

He added last year and this year the consumer outlook was completely different.

“The world has changed. People are nervous and they don’t have any money so we have looked at the network to see what the right fit for Belfast is this winter and that is why we have selected the routes we have.

“The demand profile of the summer is fundamentally different and city breaks are much more likely to sell. But in winter people want to get away to the sun and that is the basis for the routes.”

The airline will this week carry its millionth passenger through Belfast - well ahead of schedule, said Mr Corneille.

“In our first year we carried 750,000 passengers and our target was 500,000, so we have been successful in generating volume.

“That is the first thing you want to generate in a new base and yields kind of come later.”

Mr Corneille insisted it was not all doom and gloom and the load factor on Belfast routes was 81% in April, the highest yet.

It set a target of 500,000 passengers in the first year of operation and carried 750,000.

“We are still ahead of target and we have a target of breaking even in year two ” he said.