EasyJet to Take Over Aer Lingus Gatwick Airport Slots

It now seems that Easyjet will be filling up the slots at Gatwick Airport, which will be vacated by Aer Lingus later on this year. The budget airline will be adding three aircrafts to its fleet at Gatwick but has not revealed where they will fly. Aer Lingus, meanwhile, will take two of its Airbus A320′s out of operation. This means that it will be reducing its fleet size to just three at Gatwick.

This new move will become effective from the end of March. The three aircrafts that remain at the airport will be serving Malaga, Dublin and Knock, and a new route to Cork. On top of these cuts, it seems that the company will also be deferring the delivery of two A320 aircrafts, originally due for delivery in October and November of this year to April and May of next year.

Savage pay cuts, a round of redundancies, and a large capacity cut means that the Irish flag carrier might be able to post a small profit for this year. A statement from the company said that, as a result of the cost and capacity management actions that were implemented in 2009, the group may be able to report a small operating profit for the second half of 2009.

Aer Lingus went on to say that this performance primarily reflects better than expected yields in the second half of 2009. This has been derived by the removal of a long haul aircraft in September and tactical route cancellations in November. Passenger figures were also up in December of last year by 9 percent when compared year on year.