Aer Lingus reports losses of £87.5m
Aer Lingus has reported losses of 140 million euros, or £87.5 million.
It blames the losses on redundancy costs and the downturn in air travel following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
The Irish airline saw passenger numbers fall by 4.6% to 6.6 million in the year to the end of December.
Aer Lingus has already cut more than 2,000 jobs under a survival plan established last year.
It says the foot-and-mouth crisis and the slump in the number of American tourists visiting Ireland had a 'devastating' effect.
The airline was recently forced to ground its fleet for several days due to industrial action.
Aer Lingus is pledging to improve its competitiveness and bring down ticket prices.
It says it's on course to achieve further savings of 130 million euros (£81.3 million).
Chairman Tom Mulcahy says: "The airline's survival plan has now been implemented and, while good progress has been made, much more remains to be done to return the company to adequate levels of profitability."
Chief executive Willie Walsh says he can not rule out further job cuts, but adds that the "vast bulk" of the continuing savings would be made in "non staff-related costs" which accounted for 75% of the cost base.
Yeah Seriph, you management boys have all the brains alright. How else could you rip off the loss making companies you run and still manage to blame it on the greedy staff.