Aer Lingus expects to report an operating profit in excess of €75 million for 2003, its chief executive, Mr Willie Walsh, has said.

Mr Walsh said the airline would exceed €75 million "slightly". He also disclosed that last week, for first time, the airline sold more than 50 per cent of its tickets on its website, www.aerlingus.com. He described this as a "huge advance".

"[This year\] has been a challenging year, very different to what anyone could have expected, but we will achieve our profit target of an operating profit of €75 million. We will probably exceed that slightly and in 2004 we intend to build on that profitability. Again it will be a challenging year, very competitive. But we need to make progress and we are determined to do so," he said, speaking on RTÉ Radio One.

Mr Walsh, who is due to take a board seat at fruit company Fyffes, said the company's cost base still needed to be cut and "every day" people had to examine how things were done at the airline.

Asked about the potential sale of the airline he said: "That is very much an issue for the Government. The responsibility of the management is to manage the day-to-day business of the company."

The airline expects 2004 to be a tough year, although worldwide forecasts are reasonably optimistic compared to 2003.

Meanwhile, Geneva's international airport yesterday celebrated its eight millionth passenger to pass through this year - a record for one of Europe's first airline terminals.

The previous passenger record for the booming Cointrin airport was 7,826,303 in the year 2000, just before global economic woes hit leisure air travel.

Officials at the airport, its fortunes boosted by the growing presence of budget airline Easyjet, said the surge this year was at least 6 per cent higher than the continental average.