THE RECENT decline in Aer Lingus’s passenger traffic continued in February, with the airline recording an 8.4 slump in customer numbers across its short-haul and transatlantic traffic.

Aer Lingus said it carried 688,000 people in February compared with 751,000 in the same month of 2008.

This comes against a backdrop of reduced capacity and reflects the effect of the recession on consumer demand.

The airline’s long-haul services were worst hit, recording a year-on-year decline of 11.7 per cent to 68,000.

Flights to the United States have been hit by the economic downturn, a weak dollar and intense competition on transatlantic routes.

In terms of short-haul services, Aer Lingus said it carried 620,000 passengers, a year-on-year reduction of 8 per cent.

Aer Lingus recorded increases in its average load factors – the number of seats it fills on each aircraft.

This reflected its decision to reduce capacity on both short-haul and transatlantic routes.

Its load factor on short-haul routes rose by 5.4 points to 77.5 per cent. Transatlantic flights achieved an average load factor of 64.3 per cent, up from 60.1 per cent a year earlier.

This gave it a total load factor of 72 per cent in February, compared with 66.7 per cent a year ago.

Aer Lingus said yesterday that it had decreased its capacity on short-haul flights by 9.2 per cent and by 20.7 per cent on flights to the US.

Aer Lingus will report its full-year results next Wednesday.

On Thursday, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary predicted that Aer Lingus would report an after-tax loss of between €100 million and €150 million.

Aer Lingus this week announced that Chris Wall was retiring as a non-executive director. He was a nominee of the minister for transport and had served on the board since 1998.