Irish Aviation Research Institute

                                                             The Aer Lingus Group including Aer Lingus Regional announced it carried 918,000 passengers in June up 4%.The airline carried 99,000 long-haul passengers up 12.5% with a load factor of 92.4% up 9% on an 0.1% increase in capacity and it carried 819,000 short-haul passengers up 0.1% with a load factor of 78.1% up 1.4% on flat capacity as two Airbus A320s where returned to lessors. The Aer Lingus Regional operation carried 95,000 passengers up 41.8% and year to date it been a strong growth driver carrying 447,000 passengers up 31% exceeding the performance of Long-haul’s 433,000 passengers, as usual figures exclude traffic carried on the joint-venture United Airlines Washington Dulles to Madrid route. The June figures demonstrate the success of its business model with strong performance on the Transatlantic with passenger numbers up 12.5% with load factors up 9% indicating a considerable volume may be using Dublin

                                                                   The consumer will be the ultimate winner this winter as three airlines (Aer Lingus, Norwegian Air Shuttle, SAS Airlines) compete for market share on the Dublin to Copenhagen route as Aer Lingus returns to the route with a daily A320 service from the 28 th of October.                                                           This will mark the fourth return to the route for Aer Lingus (2001, 2004, 2007), in addition to existing services on the route from Norwegian Air Shuttle operating twice weekly and SAS Airlines operating thirteen times weekly.                                                         Aer Lingus has been developing its brand presence in the Scandinavian & Nordic markets having launched a seasonal summer route to Helsinki  in  March 2010 and Stockholm route for summer 2012, however in an interesting development the airline has extended the Stockholm route to a year