AER LINGUS carried 1.08 million passengers in August, an increase of 7.7 per cent on the same month last year.

The airline’s load factor – the average number of seats filled on each aircraft – increased by 2.4 percentage points last month to 83 per cent during the same period.

Short-haul traffic increased by 10 per cent to 973,000 passengers last month, while long-haul passenger numbers declined 8.3 per cent to 116,000.

The load factor on short-haul flights was 85 per cent, up two points on August 2008, with capacity rising 10.7 per cent. Capacity on long-haul services fell 14.8 per cent with the load factor rising 2.1 points to 79.7 per cent.

Davy Stockbrokers said while the August passenger numbers were at the expense of yield, the load factor was up by 2.4 points while capacity decreased by 0.7 per cent. Revenue passenger kilometres rose by 2.3 per cent and available seat kilometres fell 0.7 per cent. The brokerage is forecasting a full-year loss of €142 million for the airline.

The airline announced it had cancelled 5.6 million surplus shares held by trustees of Aer Lingus’s long-term incentive plan which will not vest, or were otherwise surplus to requirements.

Shares closed up 6.6 per cent at 56 cent in Dublin yesterday.