Aviation authority proposes summer seat limit for flights into Dublin

Dublin Airport has an annual passenger limit of 32m and its operator Daa expects to breach that cap later this year

Under planning restrictions, Dublin Airport is limited to managing 32m passengers a year. 

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) has recommended a limit to the number of seats on flights into Dublin Airport during the busy summer period next year for the airport to comply with its passenger limitation.

Under its 2007 planning permission, Dublin Airport has an annual passenger limit of 32m. Dublin Airport operator Daa has already announced that it expects to breach that cap later this year.

To account for this capacity restriction, the IAA said, in a draft decision, it is proposing to implement a seat capacity limit of 25.2m seats for the summer 2025 scheduling season, which begins on March 30 and runs through to October 25.

The IAA said it anticipates that “demand for slots for the summer 2025 scheduling season would significantly exceed the proposed seat cap”.

“In line with the slot regulation, air carriers who have operated a series of slots in the summer 2024 season would be given priority, on initial coordination, in relation to those series for summer 2025. However, the IAA anticipates that not all slot series from summer 2024 would be capable of being accommodated within the proposed seat cap,” the IAA said.

The IAA has already set a limit for this winter period at 14.4m seats. The winter period starts on October 26 through to March 29 next year.

This proposal for summer 2025 would result in a total seat capacity of 39.6m across the two seasons.

“The seat cap is greater than the passenger cap as it takes account of expected load factors and an adjustment for transfer passengers,” the IAA said.

For next summer, like this winter period, the IAA said it expected very little “if any” available capacity for new slot requests or ad hoc slot requests through the terminals at Dublin Airport.

“Such an outcome and its implications for airlines, Dublin Airport, and the travelling public flows as a consequence of the planning condition itself,” the IAA said.