2008 was Dublin's busiest year

The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) has issued it's year end analysis of passenger numbers at Dublin Airport. 2008 was the airport's busiest year to date with a total of 23.5m passengers passing through. This represents a 1% increase over 2007. Strong growth of 5% in the first half of 2008 was offset by a 3% decline in the second half.

The strongest performance came from Transatlantic services which saw passenger numbers grow 14% to 1.4m in the wake of the full implementation of the EU-US Open Skies agreement. Middle East routes also saw a good growth of 8% to 250,000 passengers. The UK and European markets which still represent the largest markets are more mature markets and exhibited less spectacular performance. The UK declined 1% to 8.6m with other European routes growing 1% to 12m.

Domestic traffic contracted by 5% during the year to 870,000 which may well be as a result of the improvement in the national road network with additional 'M' standard roads opening during the year. This coupled to the difficulties of getting in and out of Dublin airport due to M50 upgrade works may well have tipped the balance for some prospective passengers.

The DAA see 2009 being a challenge and say that they have introduced 'a very attractive route and market support scheme ' to assist in route development, especially on underdeveloped markets.