Cork Airport sees 1.2m passengers in 2006

Aer Lingus was Cork Airport’s biggest customer last year, carrying 1.2 million passengers, according to the airport’s end of year report.

Ryanair, with the addition of Glasgow and East Midlands, flew 863,000 passengers to six Irish and UK destinations during the year — an increase of 5%.

European scheduled routes were the strongest performers in terms of growth up 30%.

Intense competition between Ryanair and Aer Arann on flights to and from the capital witnessed an increase in passengers using the Cork-Dublin services of 20%.

2.8 million passengers flew with the 11 airlines that operated scheduled services from Cork.

Over 1.4 million passengers availed of flights to and from the United Kingdom.

With connectivity to the three London Airports — Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted — emphasised by the 892,000 passengers who flew to and from Cork Airport.

Half a million passengers availed of internal flights within the country, primarily on the Cork-Dublin and Cork-Galway routes.

390,000 passengers flew on chartered flights to an increasing range of winter sun, winter ski, summer sun and pilgrimage destinations.

205,000 passengers flew direct to and from the five Polish cities now served directly from Cork Airport, an increase of 173% or two-and-a-half times that achieved in 2006.

Two new airlines, Air Southwest and SkyEurope began operations from Cork Airport in 2007 with additional capacity added on many routes into Europe and six new routes launched in total.

Aer Arann flew 332,000 passengers on 11 Irish, UK and French routes during the year, an increase of 8%.

Bmibaby carried 147,000 passengers in 2007, while Wizz Air grew four-fold to 83,000 passengers and Centralwings eleven-fold to 79,000 passengers after a full year of operations at Cork Airport.

7,000 passengers flew with Air Southwest to Newquay during their first year of operations from Cork Airport while a further 5,000 travelled with SkyEurope to Bratislava (Vienna).

Cork Airport currently offers passengers a choice of 41 destinations with ten airlines operating scheduled flights to these destinations.