Ireland’s flagship airline, Aer Lingus which is currently negotiating to cull 15 percent of its staff, yesterday revealed a 9.7 percent slide in third-quarter revenues and warned that increasing costs and the current economic climate meant that it would have to make further cuts.

The year-on-year revenue dip in the three months to the end of September came as a 7 percent rise in passenger volume was more than offset by the average fare per passenger falling by 17.6 percent.

The former state carrier had cut back on the number of long-haul flights and passenger numbers on long haul dropped 13.2 percent as short haul numbers rose by 10 percent.  However long haul fares have dropped 18 percent.

The carriers load factor, the proportion of seats filled per flight, rose by 1.3 percent to 80.4 percent.

The company said in a statement that the actions had been taken to remove capacity on underperforming parts of the network and has had an positive impact on stabilising load factors and yields while reducing operating costs.

Having ended the least of one of its Airbus A330 jets last month it said today that it would take another A330 out of long haul service, bringing its winter fleet to five jets and next year’s summer fleet would be no more than six.

Aer Lingus, which has twice beat off hostile approaches from low cost rival, Ryanair, added that while the fall in yield year on year continued, the pace of decline in average fares did not appear to be accelerating currently.

It said that the business continued to experience challenging conditions, with higher fuel prices, airport and navigation charges together with further expected GDP declines and unemployment increases in major markets would mean the airline must continue to reduce any costs with their control.