Aer Arann is a privately-held regional airline based in Dublin, Ireland. It operates scheduled and charter services throughout Ireland, the United Kingdom and France. Its main base is Dublin International Airport, with hubs at Galway Airport and Cork International Airport. Aer Arann began providing flights between Galway and three of the Aran Islands in 1970. In 1994 Padraig O'Ceidigh purchased the airline and began to expand its routes and fleet. Just over 625,000 passengers flew Aer Arann flights in 2003. The airline has greatly expanded its route network since it was founded, especially since changing from an island-oriented service to a regional one in 1998, when a service between Donegal and Dublin was first established. Aer Arann also started freight service between Dublin and Coventry that same year, its first flights to Great Britain. Passenger flights outside Ireland first started in 2000, when a daily service between Dublin and the Isle of Man was established. June 2004 saw the start of passenger flights to continental Europe with the opening of a Galway-Waterford-Lorient route. In early December 2004 Aer Arann announced that it had carried 400,000 passengers through Cork Airport since the start of 2004, an increase of 57% on the previous year. In October 2004 the European Regions Airline Association awarded a bronze medal for achievement to Aer Arann. The gold medal went to Aegean Airlines and the silver to Eastern Airways. Aer Arann has approximately 350 employees as of 2005. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Aer Arann". |