Aer Lingus July passenger numbers up 4.3%

Aer Lingus, which is currently in the process of being bought by International Consolidated Airlines Group, carried 4.3% more passengers in July compared to the same month last year, according to traffic stats released by the Irish airline on Friday.

Passenger numbers for July totalled 1.26m, up from 1.21m in 2014, with the company’s long-haul passenger numbers up 18.3% to 168,000.

Short haul routes carried 962,000, up 3.7% from 928,000 in July last year.

Meanwhile, the load factor, which measures the number of seats that were actually taken up on each flight, rose to 88.6% from 87.3% for both long and short haul flights.

Year-to-date, the airline has carried 6.45m passenger, up just 0.1% from last year’s numbers.

At 1128 BST, Aer Lingus shares were up 0.6% at 2.51p.