I had same problem as vanhre asked in Spring forum, but in my case I couldn't change the constructor.
I'm using Spring java configuration, so it was initializing ok during jetty start, but in runtime, when I executed the functionality with my aspect it failed with exactly the same exception from the forum.
I found later, that I need aspectjrt
dependency in my pom.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.aspectj</groupId>
<artifactId>aspectjrt</artifactId>
<version>1.6.12</version>
</dependency>
edit: Missing dependency was an error, but real problem is Eclipse + aspects combination. When I used Eclipse to build my aspect class this error occurred. Additionally when I compiled class the aspect advice was for, aspect was not called.
solution: you have to use maven to build your application (I'd be glad if someone find solution for Eclipse, because I'm sure I'll forget this)
download
http://central.maven.org/maven2/org/aspectj/aspectjrt/1.6.9/aspectjrt-1.6.9.jar
and add to your project