Aer Lingus shares jumped over 8 per cent to €2.38 yesterday on a very busy first day of trading ahead of a full official listing next week.

More than 200 million shares changed hands on the Dublin and London markets with a large number of investors pocketing significant opening day gains. The dealing was conditional in nature and done at investor's own risk. The airline listed at €2.20 in the morning, at the lower end of the range published two weeks earlier by the airline. After the markets closed last night the airline was valued at more than €1.2 billion.

While staff will ultimately hold 14.9 per cent of the equity via an Employee Share Ownership Trust (ESOT), it understood millions of euro was spent by the airline's staff on additional shares. A group of several hundred pilots have bought a large number of shares, Aer Lingus sources confirmed yesterday.

In total Aer Lingus estimated yesterday that €25 million worth of shares may have been purchased by the airlines's staff, including pilots.

The airline is now preparing to immediately use some of the €535 million of proceeds produced by the sale. Chief executive Dermot Mannion said European manufacturer Airbus was making "positive soundings" about a new deal involving some wide bodied A330 aircraft. He said there was a possibility of two or three of them becoming available sometime in 2008, although they would need to be ordered before that.

But he refused to rule out something emerging from talks with Boeing which is pitching its highly fuel efficient 787 Dreamliner to airlines. Boeing, however, is at a disadvantage because the waiting times for the Dreamliner are longer than the A330.

Mr Mannion said the next set of results for the company would be issued next year, most likely in March. But in the meantime he said the "booking profile" for the airline's tickets for October and November was in line with 2005.

While the final price range was the lower end of the published range, it is understood this was to mollify Irish institutions who were keen to purchase large amounts of stock in the range €2.10 to €2.20. The co-ordinators of the IPO were anxious to include a large number of stable long term Irish institutions in the float and the number of hedge funds, it is understood, has been reduced.

Roy Barrett, chief executive of Goodbody Stockbrokers, said the investment roadshow by the airline's management had met 160 institutions over recent weeks and this had put great momentum behind the IPO. He said the float was a successful transaction, particularly considering the background of volatile oil prices and keen competition in the European airline sector.

The Minister for Transport Martin Cullen seemed to agree with this yesterday. Speaking to The Irish Times he said: "On the price, what the Government wanted to achieve was a good qualitative share holding base, to make sure there is good stability in the share price going forward. I think we've done that. That was certainly very much to the fore when we considered what price to go at."

He said he was happy with the price. "It is reacting they way we have hoped. I am very pleased". He said 90 per cent of the smaller retail investors got what they wanted, although some small retail investors who put down major funds did not get all their allocation. The Minister said he would shortly appoint three Government nominated directors to the board of the airline. "They will behave in the best interests of the company," he said.

He denied that planning objections from Ryanair to terminal 2 could slow up the expansion plans of Aer Lingus. He said a press conference held this week by Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary was portrayed as a "publicity stunt" by some observers and he held a similar view.