Travel recovery continues with 1.76m air and sea passengers arriving in State last month

The number of Irish and foreign passengers who arrived here by air and sea last month was more than 1.76 million, more than twice the September 2021 figure, according to the Central Statistics Office.

The statistics demonstrate a continuing recovery in travel numbers after they plummeted during the Covid-19 pandemic but also show pre-pandemic activity levels have not yet been reached.

The 1.76 million figure for September 2022 is more than double the number of passengers who arrived here in September 2021, and represents multiples of the September 2020 figure of 254,440. It remains 7.7 per cent lower than the pre-pandemic September number of some 1.87 million passengers.

Recovery is most evident in air travel, which has more than doubled since September 2021. The figures also show that sea travel is back to its September 2019 pre-pandemic level.

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Some 1.62 million passengers (94.3 per cent) arrived in the Republic by air last month and 99.200 (5.7 per cent) came by sea with most — 525,000 — coming via Britain.

Gregg Patrick, a statistician in the CSO’s Travel and Tourism Division, said the recovery in air travel is evident across all major routes. Transatlantic traffic is up most in relative terms, with five passengers arriving here on such routes last month for every one passenger arriving on such routes in September 2021.

Of the continental routes, Spain was the busiest, with 250,200 passengers arriving — almost twice the number of September 2021.

“However, in overall terms, Great Britain remained the most important departure country for overseas travel to Ireland with 525,000 passengers arriving on air and sea routes from there compared to just 252,000 in September 2021,” Mr Patrick said.

Other important country gateways for passengers travelling to Ireland were the US (173,200), France (114,500) and Italy (94,300). The number travelling from Spain was 2.3 per cent higher than pre-pandemic and the numbers arriving from France and Italy also increased, by 2.7 per cent and 11.2 per cent respectively. Passenger arrivals from the US fell by 13.6 per cent compared to the September 2019 numbers.

The statistics concern overseas travel into and out of the Republic only and do not deal with cross-Border travel or domestic travel within the Republic. The CSO findings are based on administrative data provided by Irish airports and on passenger data provided by sea carrier companies operating ferries to and from Ireland.