Aer Lingus suffered a 25% slump in passengers carried in December due to bad weather disruption.
The total of 572,000 was 25.3% down on December 2009, with short haul numbers down by more than 27% to 504,000 and long haul down by 6.8% to 68,000.
The Irish carrier said that “in common with many other carriers, Aer Lingus experienced poor weather conditions leading to flight cancellations and significant disruptions to operations”.
The airline’s available capacity was trimmed by almost 32% in the month as a result of the weather-related disruption and planned reductions at Gatwick, Dublin and Cork airports. The overall load factor improved by 2.7 points on December 2009 to 74.6%.