Ryanair announced today that its 40th base would be opened at Kaunas in May 2010 next. The carrier currently operates nine routes to Lithuania's second city but from this summer the company's presence will be strengthened by basing two aircraft and adding nine routes. Ryanair expects that passenger number from its operation at Kaunas will reach 1m per year as a result.

The nine new routes will serve Reus, Berlin Schoenefeld, Weeze, Edinburgh, London Gatwick, Bergamo, Torp, Charleroi and Tampere. Ryanair says that it is currently engaged in negotiations with four other central European airports with a view to establishing further bases.

Aer Lingus announced today that preliminary results for the 12 months ended December 31 2009 will be announced at 07.00am on Tuesday March 09 2010. The company had previously advised that the announcement would be made on Wednesday March 10.

EI-DUB will be the third Airbus A330 (msn 55) to leave the Aer Lingus fleet for Vladivostok Avia. Unlike it's predecessors (which were painted in France), EI-DUB was painted in Manchester from where it returned to Shannon on Friday January 29 last. After a week under cover with the maintenance crew at the Aer Lingus hangar it departed again for Bordeaux on Saturday afternoon last, February 6 as EIN 2508. The prospects of a decent picture at Shannon were receding as the day dragged on with a fog that stubbornly refused to lift under an inversion layer. The weather in Bordeaux was only marginally better but Jon Rodgers' pictures of the ground crew handling -DUB on arrival were certainly better than anything achieved in Shannon ! 

Aer Lingus today released its passenger figures for January 2010. The total number of passengers flown for the month was 665,000 which was up juts 0.6% YoY. Short haul, at 608,000 was up 3.6% YoY but long haul for the month stood at just 54,000, a 23% YoY decline. Revenue Passenger Kilometers (RPK) on short haul was 639m, up 7% and on long haul the figure was 303m, down 25.7%. The network total for the month was 942m, down 6.3% YoY from 1,005m in January 2009.

Load factor on short haul was 67.6, up 3% YoY with capacity increased by 2.3%. On long haul, Load Factor was 67%, up 3.2% YoY, against a capacity reduction of 29.4%. Network total Load Factor was 67.4%, up 3.1% YoY. In stating the load factor figures Aer Lingus stated that in common with other carriers it suffered the effects of bad weather which led to flight cancellations. These cancellations resulted in a greater than normal difference between booked passengers numbers and flown passengers numbers. Aer Lingus calculates Load Factor on booked passenger numbers. When the Load Factor for January is calculated using flown passengers the figure drops to 64.1%. Ryanair released its passenger numbers last week without mention of the weather, noting that Load Fator grew 1% YoY to 70%.

Two of this weekend's bizjet visitors to Dublin are very familiar faces but are infrequent nonetheless. Saturday saw a visit from Cessna 560 Citation HB-VMV operated by Sonnig SA in an attractive black scheme. The aircraft is a 1992 build with msn 560-0166.

A slightly older visitor was French Falcon 100 F-GSLZ operated by THS Helicopters. The aircraft is msn 208 and is early 1980's vintage wearing its current registration since 1999. Thanks to Derek Gannon bith both pictures.

At the last count there were 12 Boeing 737 aircraft scattered around the hangars and field in Shannon. Several of these aircraft are the legacy of Olympic and lease hand backs from Aegean. This week another ex Olympic B737 arrived in the shape of SX-BLC , B737-3Q8 msn 26303 which arrived on Tuesday. The aircraft is a 1994 build and previously served with Malev as HA-LEJ until 2004. It is pictured above in the all white scheme behind sister ship SX-BKT, msn 25377 which was delivered to THY as TC-JEO in 1995. SX-BKT has been in Shannon since January 22 last.

The Irish Aviation Authority website is among a shortlist of 17 government websites for a People's Choice Award 2010. The awards which are now in their 8th year are designed to recognise the efforts of those involved in web design, authoring and delivery  of Government services. The awards will be presented on February 19 next at a dinner in Dublin Castle. The IAA is urging the public to cast their vote in its favour at :  VOTE

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) today issued the Irish Civil Aircraft Register updated to February 03 2010. The complete current listing of EI- registered aircraft may be downloaded in Excel format at : Register

Reports surfaced last weekend that Ryanair had made an offer for an undisclosed equity stake in Brazilian low cost carrier Webjet. The airline which was started in 2004 with two aircraft is now ranked third in the domestic Brazilian market behind TAM and GOL. In December 2009 Webjet had just over 5% market share, the highest figure it has achieved in its short history and up from 1.5% in January 2008. The report which appears to have originated at Webjet said that the talks would proceed after the Brazilian government introduces legislation next month which will lift the ceiling on foreign ownership from its current level of 20% to 49%.

On Monday at the announcement of Ryanair's Q3 results, Ryanair chief executive  Michael O'Leary scotched the rumours when he said "In 25 years we've never invested in an airline outside of Europe and it's not going to happen now either."

Time will tell if there is any truth in the report or if it's a case of Webjet following Michael O'Leary's PR 101 program - "There ain't no such thing as bad publicity" .

On Monday, Ryanair announced 7 new routes to be operated from Cork this coming summer. Yesterday the carrier announced a further 18 new routes coming on line from April 2010 - as follows :

GECAS is to lease B737-86N msn 28591 to Egyptian operator Midwest. The aircraft emerged from the Eirtech paint hangar in Shannon yesterday wearing registration N112MN. The aircraft had previously been leased as F-GZZA to French operator Axis Airways who folded in November 2009.

Members of union Mandate have overwhelmingly voted to accept the terms of a cost improvement program negotiated by the Labour Relations Commission which wil save the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) €40m. Last week members of Siptu union also voted to accept the agreement which will see 275 redundancies at the three state airports in Dublin, Shannon and Cork and the non-renewal of the contracts of 100 temporary employees. Those entitled to redundancy payments will receive 6.75 weeks pay for each year of service.

Under the terms of the agreement, a pay freeze will be implemented until 2011. The DAA has also negotiated an Employee Recovery Investment Contribution scheme with remaining staff facing a 5.5% reduction in pay from February. The plan involves employees investing a percentage of their salaries which will be recovered at the end of a 3 year period or when the DAA returns to profitability.

"Gaggle" is propably as good a word as any to use as a collective noun for Gulfstreams, so yesterday, Tuesday there was a Gaggle day stopping off in LAP B. From left to right - N408QS (msn 1308), N424QS (msn 1324), both NetJets, N423TT (msn 1085) of West Palm Beach based TRT Leasing Inc and N212LF, Gulfstream 450 (msn 4139) of Leflight Aviation. Thanks to Derek Gannon for the use of his picture.

It's quite some time since Slovenaian operator Adria operated CRJ's into Dublin, the type having been found too small for demand on the route between Dublin and Ljubljana during the 1990's. Yesterday CRJ registered S5-AAJ visited and is pictured by Derek Gannon loading up for an 8.00am departure to Stansted.

It originally arrived in Shannon on lease handback from easyJet in early November and apart from a brief return trip to Gatwick over the New Yeart Airbus, A320-232 G-TTOF (msn 1918) has been stored as a white tail in various locations around the airfield in Shannon. On January 12 last it emerged from the Shannon Aerospace paint shop in the full colours of Russian operator Avia Nova and wearing Irish registration EI-ELD. Since then it has spent most of its time parked in the engine run up bay but recently re-entered the SA hangar. This morning the aircraft re-emerged from the Aerospace hangar, but wearing its UK registration again and is pictured above as such.