Team size: Six

Key team members: Laurence Gourley (General counsel), Méabh Gallagher, Ken Millar, Dermot Kilbane, Bronach O’Connell, Prithvi Poona, Debbie O’Reilly

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

As the in-house legal function of an international airline operating in multiple jurisdictions in Europe and North America, the Aer Lingus legal department provides commercially-focused advice and support across a wide range of legal and regulatory issues. Principal areas of work include aviation law, regulatory affairs, negotiation of commercial contracts, compliance concerns (data protection, competition law, corporate governance), consumer rights, and commercial litigation.

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

Aviation was among the industries worst hit by the Covid-19 crisis. Air travel was severely curtailed over a two-year period, resulting in airlines suffering substantial financial losses and giving rise to significant legal issues in relation to contract performance and consumer rights. In addition, the new regulatory regime emerging from the Brexit transition presented a number of significant challenges for air services between the EU and the UK. Aer Lingus was required to set up a new UK-based carrier (Aer Lingus UK) to operate services between its Manchester base and destinations in the US. This was a cross-functional project in every respect, involving workstreams across the entire business and giving rise to a myriad of legal issues to resolve.

Has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities, and if so how?

As an airline, sustainability objectives are a central focus to all our activities (including those of the legal department). The European Commission’s ‘Fit for 55’ package comprises a number of important initiatives that will impose legal obligations on carriers. Aer Lingus is part of the International Airlines Group (IAG), which is the first airline group to publish a quantified roadmap to net-zero emissions by 2050. This objective will be attained through a range of initiatives relating to the acquisition of new technologies used to develop more fuel-efficient modern aircraft. Aer Lingus has also committed to powering 10% of our flights with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by 2030 and 60% of flights by 2050.

Other sustainability initiatives include the introduction of our voluntary carbon offsetting tool, the reduction of waste on board aircraft, and the increase of electric vehicles on the ground. To help us on our sustainability journey, we are working towards achieving our accreditation for the IATA Environmental Assessment Programme (IEnvA). IEnvA assists in establishing a framework for an environmental management system used to comply with legal requirements and determine the significance of a policy’s environmental aspects, objectives and targets.