Nine new routes will be added to Dublin Airport this year as passenger numbers skyrocketed last year.
Passenger numbers last year increased by a whopping 231% to over 28.1 million compared to 2021 when Covid-19 curbs were still in place. Despite the massive jump, passengers numbers through Dublin Airport are still only at 85% of the pre-Covid metrics.
Aer Lingus is adding three new summer routes this year to Kos in Greece, Olbia in Sardinia and Brindisi in Italy. Two transatlantic routes will be added through the year as well. A new route to Cleveland, Ohio will commence in May and the Hartford, Connecticut flight is set to return on March 26.
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Other transatlantic services will be increased during the busy summer period, including the route to Boston, New York JFK, Chicago and Washington DC. From April 2023, Norwegian airline Widerøe will fly between Dublin Airport and the Norwegian city of Bergen. Ryanair will also be adding routes from Dublin to Kos, Brindisi, Trieste in Italy and Clui and Lasi in Romania.
The revival in passenger numbers following the Covid-19 pandemic continued to accelerate as the year progressed, with passenger levels in the final three months of 2022 totalling 7.1 million – the equivalent to 96% of numbers in the same period of 2019.
During the month of December 2022 alone, a total of 2.2 million passengers travelled through Dublin Airport – an increase of 1 million passengers compared to 2021 and 95% of the passenger numbers seen pre-pandemic in December 2019.
Dublin Airport Authority's new CEO Kenny Jacobs said: “Following two years of Covid disruption, 2022 was the year in which international travel came back very strong. When you consider that passenger numbers during the first two months of 2022 were very low due to uncertainty around the Omicron variant, the recovery in passenger numbers from March onwards was way beyond the expectations of even the most optimistic of travel forecasters.
“This resurgence in travel has posed challenges for Dublin Airport and airports all around the world. I’d like to pay tribute to the incredible team there which has worked tirelessly to facilitate more than 28 million journeys over the past 12 months.
"Their hard work over the Christmas period – the busiest in three years – saw 93% of passengers pass through security screening in under 20 minutes, with 99% through in under 30 minutes. In the year ahead, we are determined to maintain this security performance and make further improvements to the standards at Dublin Airport so that the travelling public get the service they expect.”
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