Aer Lingus’s Belfast debut fails to add up for Ryanair

A WAR of words broke out yesterday between Aer Lingus and Ryanair over how many passengers were onboard the former’s inaugural flight between Belfast and London.

In what Aer Lingus is describing as a stunt, Ryanair had staff members checked onto the flight so that they could hand out free Ryanair flight vouchers to Aer Lingus passengers waiting to board the 7.40am service.

Ryanair claimed only 39 passengers availed of the service, what it described as a “disastrous” load factor of less than 25%.

“This was not just Aer Lingus’s inaugural London flight, but also the peak Monday morning business flight from Belfast to London. By contrast more than 130 passengers — a load factor of 80% — were booked to travel on Ryanair’s early-morning business flight from Belfast City Airport to Stansted,” said Ryanair’s Peter Sherrard, who was one of the staff due to board the flight.

However, Aer Lingus pointed out that, firstly, Mr Sherrard was not actually on the flight to comment on the “room on board”, and secondly the passengers that Ryanair counted did not include those who had checked in online.

Aer Lingus commercial director Enda Corneille said the 174-seat flight was almost full, as were all its subsequent flights between the two airports yesterday. He said Aer Lingus had sold 100,000 flights from its new Belfast base so far this year.

“Even the flights which are not due to begin until February have higher bookings than flights to the same destinations from Dublin in some cases,” he said.

Mr Corneille also addressed the future of Cork and Dublin flights to Heathrow in the event that the Belfast route is successful. There have been concerns that the airline will move all flights away from the Republic’s airports.

Mr Corneille said both the Dublin and Cork flights to Heathrow were profitable and were meeting the expectation airline management had placed on them.

However, he did add that the airline would continue to move its assets in ways that would generate the best returns for the business.