The Central Statistics Office (CSO) reported that a record 39.2 million travellers used Irish airports in 2022, a 20 percent increase from the previous year.
Additionally, it was 3 percent greater than in 2019—the year before the epidemic struck.
85 percent of the passengers were handled by Dublin Airport. Cork took care of 7 percent, while Shannon handled 5 percent. In 2023, 274,000 flights were registered at the nation’s five major commercial airports, with Dublin accounting for 84% of those flights. The most frequently travelled routes from Dublin Airport were to Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, Heathrow and Gatwick in London, and Damien Lenihan, a statistician at the CSO’s section of agriculture, transport, and tourism.

Heathrow was the most travelled route at Cork and Shannon, and Stansted was the most popular route at Knock. The route that Kerry most frequently traveled was to Dublin.
With 19.6 million people arriving overall, there were over 3.3 million more travelers to Ireland in 2022 than in 2022. Nine million people used the major airports in Ireland in the last quarter of 2023. That was 479,000 more than what was in the final three months of 2019 and 781,000 more than what was in the last quarter of 2022. Dublin Airport’s ability to grow is restricted by a passenger limitation of 32 million annually.

This ceiling was put in place as a part of a planning requirement that was applied to the building of T2 about 20 years ago. The DAA, which runs the airports in Cork and Dublin, has requested approval from Fingal County Council to increase the annual ceiling to forty million. The council requested more information in February regarding several different topics. Airlines and businesses have backed the effort to increase the cap. In order to make sure that the cap isn’t exceeded, the DAA has also had to communicate with airlines. Nevertheless, new airline services have been introduced to the airport, such as JetBlue’s US routes.

This year, Aer Lingus has also increased the size of its network by adding a new route to Denver and resuming operations on its Minneapolis-St. Paul route. In addition, US airline Delta has begun service to Minneapolis-St. Paul, while Hainan Airlines has boosted the frequency of its summertime Dublin-Beijing route. 2023 is the busiest year ever for Cork Airport, with 2.8 million people passing through. Shannon handled just under two million passengers, a 29 percent increase over 2022, while Knock’s Ireland West Airport recorded 818,000 passengers in a record year.

For more Details: https://thecioworld.com