Aer Lingus profits up 18%
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Aer Lingus has announced its preliminary results for 2014, noting an impressive 18% rise in operating profits.
The carrier made €72.0 million up 17.8% from €61.1 million in the previous year with total revenue up 9.2% to €1,556.9 million compared to €1,425.1 million in 2013.
Total network passengers surpassed 11 million for the first time in its history in 2014 and the average fare revenue per seat was €98.93, up 9.4%.
Commenting on the performance Christoph Mueller, Aer Lingus’ CEO said 2014 had “proved the strength of our ‘value carrier’ business model across both our short and long haul businesses”.
“We profitably expanded our long haul network utilising our cost advantage and favourable geographic position and helped establish Dublin as the 7th largest European hub for transatlantic connections,”he continued.
“Our short haul business continued to demonstrate its resilience despite a highly competitive market.
“Commercial initiatives, in addition to cost control, led to the highest operating profit since the financial crisis and 17.8% above last year.”
Mueller added that the time had come to invest in the “customer proposition and distribution model” in addition to reducing costs.
“Now that the complex IASS pension funding issues have been addressed, we are re-launching our CORE programme, starting with the introduction of a new voluntary severance scheme at the beginning of this year,” he asserted.
Mueller is handing over to incoming chief Stephen Kavanagh at the end of the week.
Long haul performance saw revenue up 28.4% to €490.0 million, passenger numbers up 20.6% and load factor up 0.6 points to 83.7%.
Short haul performance saw average fare per seat up 2.5% to €69.60 on steady load factors. Short haul revenue in 2014 was €791.0 million compared to €789.0 million in the previous year.
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