In a trading statement issued Tuesday, the airline said revenues fell 11% to €1.21bn, while operating costs were cut by 6.4% to €1.29bn, which meant full year operating loss before exceptionals widened to €81m from €20m last time.
The operating result comprised a loss of €93m in the first half of 2009, followed by a €12m profit in the second.
Full year fare revenue fell 13.6% to €992.7m, due to a 16.8% decline in average fares. Average short-haul fares were 12% lower year-on-year at €77.10, while long-haul fares were down 15.9% at €255.70.
The fall in fare revenue was, however, offset by a 16.2% rise in ancillary revenue to €173.9m. Ancillary revenue per passenger grew by11.9% to €16.75.
Cargo and other revenue decreased by 31.8% and 17.2% respectively year-on-year.
Aer Lingus carried a total of 10.38m passengers in 2009, up 3.8%.
Traffic in revenue passenger kilometres slipped by 2.8% on capacity in available seat kilometres cut by 5.1%, resulting in a 1.7 percentage point improvement in load factor to 74.5%.
Aer Lingus was scheduled to release its detailed 2009 results today, but delayed the announcement until the conclusion of a number of union ballots over its planned €97m cost savings programme.
Results of four of the five ballots have been published to date, with three – pilots, middle management and ground operations/support areas/certain cabin crew – in favour of the programme.
However, cabin crew represented by the IMPACT union have rejected the proposals, while the ballot result for maintenance staff is not yet known.
See also:
Cabin crew give thumbs down to Aer Lingus cuts (08/03/2010)
European airline traffic Jan10 (10/02/2010)
‘Civilised’ Aer Lingus takes middle path (27/01/2010)
Cuts help Aer Lingus to operating profit (08/01/2010)