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More than 23.5 million passengers have used Dublin airport so far this year, beating the previous record for passenger traffic set seven years ago.
The Irish capital airport’s previous record was achieved in 2008 during the country’s economic boom, when the airport handled 23.46 million passengers.
Airport managing director, Vincent Harrison, said: “Dublin airport is having a record year for passenger numbers due to strong growth across all major sectors of the market.
“Passenger numbers are up 16% so far this year, with record numbers of people travelling to and from Dublin on European, UK, transatlantic and other international routes.
“We have already welcomed more than 3.1 million extra passengers this year and we still have most of December to come.”
The growth in passenger numbers this year is due to a combination of 23 new routes and additional capacity on many existing airline services.
Five new long-haul services were launched this year and 18 new short-haul routes.
The new routes include Aer Lingus services to Washington, Liverpool and Nantes, Ryanair to Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Lublin, Ethiopian Airlines to Los Angeles and Addis Ababa, and new flights to Reykjavik, Barcelona and Paris Orly with Wow Air, Vueling and Transavia respectively.
“The new routes and extra capacity contributed to a very strong summer period, as more than 5.3 million passengers used Dublin airport during July and August, which is our busiest time of the year,” Harrison added.
The strong traffic performance has also continued into the winter season.
“This winter, our airline customers will have about 1.5 million extra seats to and from Dublin airport, which is a 13% increase in the total number of seats available. There are three new services for the winter this year and 13 routes that started in the summer have continued into the winter season for the first time,” said Harrison.
A total of 11 new scheduled services have already been announced for next year including new transatlantic services by Aer Lingus to Los Angeles, Newark and Hartford, Connecticut, and Air Canada Rouge to Vancouver.
Aer Lingus will have new services to Montpellier, Murcia and Pisa, Ryanair will run new routes to Athens and Vigo, Blue Air will have a new service to Cluj in Romania and Aegean Airlines will operate a new route to Athens.
Dublin Airport will also have new long-haul charter services next year, as Falcon Holidays and Thomson will operate direct flights to Cancun in Mexico, and Montego Bay in Jamaica next summer.