PASSENGER NUMBERS AT Dublin Airport hit a record 27.9 million last year – more than four times the population of the island of Ireland.

The airport’s traffic exceeded the previous record set in 2015 by more than 2.8 million passengers.

Short-haul traffic increased by 11% last year, as almost 24.3 million passenger took short-haul flights to and from Dublin, while long-haul passenger numbers increased by 12% to more than 3.6 million.

Dublin Airport Managing Director Vincent Harrison said, “We had double digit growth across all of our largest market segments and welcomed new routes and new airline customers.

Last year was the sixth consecutive year of traffic growth and in the period since the opening of Terminal 2 in 2010, Dublin Airport’s annual traffic has increased by almost 9.5 million passengers from 18.4 million per year in 2010 to 27.9 million in 2016.

Nineteen new routes were introduced during the year and additional capacity was added on 31 existing services through extra flights or the use of larger aircraft.

Jobs 

The extra 6.2 million passengers over the past two years have created an estimated 5,200 additional jobs on the Dublin Airport campus.

Passenger traffic to and from continental Europe, which is Dublin Airport’s largest market segment, increased by 11% to a record 14.2 million in 2016.

The number of passengers travelling between Dublin and British destinations also reached record levels in 2016, as UK traffic increased by 12% to 9.9 million.

Transatlantic traffic was the fastest-growing segment of the market last year as a record 2.9 million passengers travelled between Dublin and North America, which was a 16% increase on the previous year.

Passenger traffic to other destinations, mainly the Middle East and Africa, declined by 3% to 781,000 during the year, due largely to a reduction in capacity.

During the peak summer season, the airport had 48 flights per day to and from 11 cities in the United States and five Canadian destinations.

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