Aer Lingus criticises Dublin Airport over plans for passenger caps
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Aer Lingus has said it is “completely unacceptable” for Dublin Airport to seek a reduction in flights from airlines next year in order to make sure it does not exceed its annual passenger limit of 32 million.
Speaking to reporters, Aer Lingus chief executive Lynne Embleton said there had been engagements with Dublin Airport operator Daa about reducing the airline's “ad hoc” flying for next year, which accounts for about 2% of their flights.
“Ad hoc” flights are not part of an airline's regular schedule — an example of which would be a flight schedule to take fans to a sporting event.
Ms Embleton said it was “completely unacceptable” for Daa to reduce ad hoc flights, particularly if it was still trying to attract other airlines to use Dublin Airport.
"It's a frustrating situation we're in, the passenger cap issue should have been addressed by now. It is shooting Ireland in the toe by proposing this cap," she said.
"We'll be making our views known to them in the meetings over the coming weeks.”
She said it was in the national interest that this gets resolved considering how much aviation brings into the economy.
Under Dublin Airport’s current planning permission, the number of passengers it can manage in a year is capped at 32 million. Daa said it would soon be seeking permission to increase that cap to 40 million.
In a statement in response to Aer Lingus, the daa said there is a realistic prospect that unconstrained demand for international travel could approach or even exceed the cap next year.
"A decision-making process exists under EU law for the co-ordination of slots used by aircraft, and it is overseen in Ireland by the IAA. This forum will be used to discuss capacity management measures to be applied from early 2024," the daa said.
The issue of the cap comes as the latest financial update from IAG shows Aer Lingus' operating profit between July and September increased to €196m compared to €139m compared to the same period last year.
Across the entire IAG company — which also includes British Airways, as well as Spanish airlines Iberia and Vueling — profit during the same period reached €1.7bn — up 39% from the €1.2bn.
Total revenue generated during those three months came to €8.6bn, up from €7.3bn last year.
The company said these higher revenues were due to a capacity increase of 17.9% compared to last year, with more passengers flying to European holiday destinations and further investment across its south and north Atlantic routes.
However, capacity is still 95.6% of what it was during the same period in 2019.
Despite the record profits recorded, IAG still highlighted some geographical and economic uncertainties that could pose risks.
It said the impact of inflation and customer confidence, as well as higher costs in the supply chains could have an impact on demand while conflict in various regions — including the developing conflict in the Middle East — could impact operations.
While IAG performed well during the last few months of the busy summer period, one of its main European rivals Air France-KLM saw its shares fall as much as 8% to an all time low as profits missed expectations.
The airline reported an operating profit of €1.34bn for July-September, up 31% year-on-year but this was 2% below what analysts forecast.
Air France-KLM said it did not expect to return to pre-pandemic capacity levels within France. It previously said it would stop operating most domestic flights from Paris-Orly airport by summer 2026 due to falling demand.