Dublin to London busiest air route as Britain-Ireland passenger figures fall

THE Dublin to London air route was Britain’s busiest international route last year.

This is despite passenger numbers between Britain and Ireland falling by 0.1 million or 0.8% in the year — the largest fall for an individual country.

The fall-off compares with high growth in travel to Ireland from Britain in 2006, when Ireland showed a 4.8% increase on 2005.

Figures from the Civil Aviation Authority show more than 4.3 million passengers flew between London and Dublin last year, with almost half of this traffic coming from Heathrow Airport.

Dublin was also the most popular route from Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham East Midlands and Prestwick, while Amsterdam was the busiest international route from Cardiff, Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Humberside, Leeds Bradford, Liverpool and Newcastle.

The second-busiest overall international route from Britain was between London and New York, which saw passenger numbers of 4.2 million last year. Of those, 2.8 million flew between Heathrow and New York’s John F Kennedy Airport.

The busiest domestic route in Britain was between London and Edinburgh, with around 3.4 million passengers last year.

Also, 2.7 million people flew between London and Glasgow, the country’s second-busiest domestic route.

The London airports comprised 58% of total British passenger numbers, compared with 58.2% in 2006. They also saw an increase of 2.8 million terminal passengers, or 2% more than in 2006.

The biggest growth in passenger numbers at the London airports was at Gatwick, which served a million more passengers last year than in 2006.

Heathrow, Luton and London City all handled more than half a million more passengers each.

The largest absolute increases were in passengers to and from Poland, up by1 million, an increase of 30.7%; Italy, up by 0.6 million, an increase of 6% and Spain, up by 0.6 million, an increase of 1.8%.