Dublin Airport flying high as number of passengers soar 7% in six months

THE number of passengers using Dublin Airport rose 7% to 8.5 million in the first six months of the year, the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) said yesterday.

The strong numbers follow a 16% increase reported by Cork Airport over the same period.

The DAA said European traffic saw the biggest increases, as passenger numbers grew 18% to 3.6 million. The increase was driven by additional new routes that were launched earlier this year, which included direct Aer Lingus flights to Seville, Naples, Marseille and Hamburg and new Ryanair services to Rome, Frankfurt Hahn, Eindhoven, Biarritz and Carcassonne.

Airport director Robert Hilliard said the choice of destinations from Dublin was a testament to the strength of the Irish economy and the attractiveness of Ireland as a business and leisure destination. “With 48 airlines flying to 116 destinations, Dublin Airport now provides passengers with the largest-ever choice of carriers and destinations befitting a capital city airport,” he said.

Almost 550,000 passengers used the airport en route to North America, which was 13% ahead of the same period last year. New services to Chicago and Toronto helped boost the figures.

Traffic to Britain remained broadly flat, however, with 4 million passengers using routes across the Irish Sea. Domestic traffic recorded a 5% fall and accounted for 316,000 passengers. This was down to growing routes operating directly from Cork, Shannon and other airports to Britain and the continent, the authority said.

Twelve new routes are scheduled to kick off from Dublin between now and the end of the year. These include services to Poland, Latvia and Slovenia. Aer Lingus will start flights to Bordeaux in Freance, Salzburg in Austria and Riga in Latvia, while a new Ryanair route to Pisa in Italy is also planned. Middle East airline Gulf Air recently announced a new direct service that will link Dublin with Bahrain for the first time.