RYANAIR HAS REPEATED its calls on the new government to break up the Dublin Airport Authority, after Dublin Airport recorded a 3.4 per cent decline in passenger numbers for February.

1,189,210 passengers flew through the airport in February 2011, compared to 1.23 million for the same month in 2010.

That fall, Ryanair said, compared unfavourably to its own passenger traffic which grew by 200,000 based on February 2011, with passenger numbers reaching 4.57 million for the month.

Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said the fall in passenger numbers at Dublin Airport was a result of the DAA’s move to increase its prices by 40 per cent since the same time last year.

“Clearly, Ryanair’s formula of low fares works, whereas tourist taxes and the DAA monopoly’s high fees continue to damage Irish tourism,” he said.

McNamara said it had become “routine” for Dublin Airport to record declining traffic, and called on the government to abolish the “failed tourist tax” of €3 on all flights.

A spokesman for Dublin Airport said, however, that charges at the airport were 26 per cent lower than at comparable airports, and added that independent studied showed Dublin to be among those with the lowest passengers charges in 2010.

Describing the claims as “self-serving”, the spokesman added that Ryanair had increased some of its own ancillary charges by 1,100 per cent since 2006 and said passenger numbers had only declined in February “due to the economic downturn in Ireland”.

All three of the DAA-controlled airports – Dublin, Cork and Shannon – recorded significant increases in the average number of passengers per day in February, however, according to statistics compiled by independent agency anna.aero.

Dublin Airport had also registered a growth in passenger numbers in January.

The air travel tax was cut from €10 per flight to €3 in the last Budget.