Aer Lingus carried 8.6 million passengers in the first 11 months of this year, a rise of 7.7 per cent on 2006.  Ciarán Hancock, Business Affairs Correspondent, reports.

The number of seats filled on each aircraft, however, declined by 1.9 per cent.

Analysts said this decline reflected a sharp increase in capacity on long and short-haul routes.

It also took into account industrial relations difficulties earlier this year that threatened services and would have affected booking patterns.

Aer Lingus said its short-haul passenger traffic in the 11-month period increased by 7.3 per cent to just under 7.5 million.

On long-haul flights, passenger numbers rose by 10.4 per cent to just more than 1.1 million.

Its load factors declined on both short and long-haul routes.

On flights around Europe, Aer Lingus filled 75.5 per cent of its seats, down from 76.2 per cent for the same period of 2006.

On flights to the US and Dubai, the load factor declined by 3.4 percentage points to 76.8 per cent.

Its average load factor was 76.1 per cent between January and November, down from 78 per cent in 2006.

In November, Aer Lingus's passenger numbers rose by 8.3 per cent to 727,000, while its average load factor was 73.4 per cent, down 3.7 points on a year earlier.

Aer Lingus chief executive Dermot Mannion said the passenger figures demonstrated a "strong performance" in both long and short-haul routes "in a period when we have increased our capacity in both sectors by a combined 23.3 per cent".