Cork Airport suffers largest decline in passenger numbers in Q3

The most popular routes in Cork Airport last quarter were London - Stansted, London - Heathrow and London - Gatwick which handled some 30,400 passengers between them.

Cork Airport suffered the largest decline in passenger numbers in the country last quarter, as the impact of Covid-19 continues to hammer the aviation sector.

Just over 90,200 passengers were handled by Cork Airport during July, August and September of this year, compared to some 832,000 in the same three months in 2019, a fall of almost 74%.

Passenger numbers also fell significantly in Shannon, with just over 45,200 passengers handled by the airport in Q3 of this year, compared to almost 536,700 in the same three months in 2019.

Together, the regional airports handled less than 30% of the passengers they had in the same quarter last year.

Overall, just 1.45 million passengers passed through Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock and Kerry airports during the three months from July to September this year, compared to over 11.5 million in the same period in 2019.

Dublin airport accounted for 87.4% of all air passengers handled in July, August and September of this year.

Busiest Routes

The most popular routes in Cork Airport last quarter were London - Stansted, London - Heathrow and London - Gatwick which handled some 30,400 passengers between them.

Outside of London, Amsterdam - Schiphol and Katowice - Pyrzowice were the fourth and fifth busiest routes, handling 6,971 and 6,455 passengers, respectively.

The top routes for Shannon were London-Gatwick, London - Stansted and Manchester.

Commenting on the release, Olive Loughnane, CSO Statistician, said the figures show a significant decline in international travel for all airport during Q3: "In particular, data for July 2020 shows a fall of 89.3% in passengers handled by Irish airports compared to July 2019."

Ms Loughnane said the amount of air freight handled by the main airports also fell by 15.4% to 31,860 tonnes in the third quarter of 2020 when compared with the same period in 2019. 

"However, freight in the first nine months of 2020 is up by 3.7% to 107,888 tonnes compared with the first nine months of 2019."