The Republic’s airports bounced back to pre-pandemic traffic levels in the third quarter of this year as almost 1.4 million more passengers passed through the facilities than in the same period of 2022.
New data from the Central Statistics Office shows 11.8 million passengers passed through the Republic’s five main airports, compared with 10.4 million passengers in the same period in 2022 and 11.6 million in the third quarter of 2019.
Almost 30.2 million passengers passed through the main Irish airports in the first nine months of 2023, which was 5.9 million more passengers than those using the airports in the same period last year.
The number of flights to and from Irish airports in the quarter increased by 9,370 compared with the same period in 2022. However, there were 670 fewer flights than in the same months of 2019.
The data shows more than 78,000 flights were handled by the State’s five main airports in the period, with Dublin handling 83 per cent of all flights (65,020), while Cork handled 8 per cent of all flights (5,891).
London-Heathrow, London-Gatwick, and Amsterdam-Schiphol were the most popular routes for passengers travelling through Dublin Airport. The top route for Cork and Shannon was London-Heathrow, while it was London-Stansted for Knock, and Dublin for Kerry.
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The number of passengers arriving to or departing from Ireland in September was more than eight times that of September 2020 (3,636,419 versus 430,627) and up by 3 per cent compared with September 2019 (3,636,419 versus 3,538,610).
Air freight handled by Irish airports in the quarter was up 8 per cent to 44,379 tonnes compared with the same quarter last year.
CSO statistician Dr Nele van der Wielen said the data shows an increase in international travel during July, August, and September with passengers travelling to and from Ireland up by 2 per cent compared with 2019 and up by 13 per cent compared with 2022.
“Almost 672,000 more passengers travelled to Ireland in the third quarter when compared with 2022, and this was almost 110,000 more passengers when compared with the same period in 2019,” she said.
“In the third quarter, 5.8 million passengers departed from Ireland, which was 683,000 more than the same period in 2022, and almost 92,000 more people when compared with 2019.”
Almost nine out of every 10 passengers (85 per cent) on international flights in the five main airports were travelling to or from Europe. The two most popular countries of origin/destination were the United Kingdom and Spain.
Outside of Europe, the United States was the most popular country of origin/destination.
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