Air passenger numbers in third quarter up 13% compared to last year
New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that almost 1.4 million more passengers used Irish airports in the third quarter of this year compared to the same time last year.
The CSO said the number of passengers travelling to and from Ireland in the third quarter rose by 2% when compared with the third quarter of 2019 – before the outbreak of the Covid pandemic.
The number of passengers was up by 13% compared with the same time last year, it added.
A total of 11.8 million passengers passed through the five main Irish airports – Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock and Kerry – in the three months from July to September.
This compared with 10.4 million passengers during the same time in 2022 and 11.6 million in the third quarter of 2019.
London-Heathrow, London-Gatwick, and Amsterdam-Schiphol were the most popular routes for passengers travelling through Dublin airport in the three month period under review.
The top route for Cork and Shannon was London-Heathrow, while the busiest route for Knock was London-Stansted, and the most popular route for passengers using Kerry airport was Dublin.
Over 78,000 flights were handled by the five airports in the third quarter, with Dublin handling 83% of all flights (65,020), while Cork handled 8% of all flights (5,891).
Today’s CSO figures show that the number of flights to and from Irish airports in the three months from July to September increased by 9,370 when compared with the same time in 2022.
However, there were 670 fewer flights when compared with the same three month period in 2019, the CSO noted.
Meanwhile, the amount of air freight handled by the main airports increased by 8% to 44,379 tonnes in the third quarter of this year compared with the same time last year.
Today’s CSO figures show that almost 30.2 million passengers passed through the main Irish airports in the first nine months of 2023, an increase of 5.9 million passengers on the same time in 2022.
Article Source – Air passenger numbers in third quarter up 13% compared to last year – RTE
