Passenger traffic at Dublin Airport hit 85% of pre-Covid levels last year

Just more than 28.1 million passengers travelled through Dublin Airport last year, representing a 231 per cent increase on 2021 activity and an 85 per cent recovery on pre-Covid 2019 levels.

The revival in passenger numbers following the 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 per cent of numbers in the same period of 2019.

During December alone, 2.2 million passengers travelled through Dublin Airport – an increase of one million passengers compared with 2021 and 95 per cent of the passenger numbers seen pre-pandemic in that month of 2019.

DAA chief executive Kenny Jacobs said: “Following two years of Covid disruption, 2022 was the year in which international travel came back very strong.

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“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 per cent of passengers pass through security screening in under 20 minutes, with 99 per cent 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.”

Just more than 13 million of the passengers travelled through Dublin Airport in the five months from August to December, which equates to almost half of the total traffic seen during the year.

Some 26.5 million passengers either started or ended their journey through Dublin Airport while 1.33 million of the overall number used the airport as a transfer hub last year.

When compared with 2021 figures, short-haul traffic increased by 216 per cent to 23.9 million, while long-haul passenger numbers increased 366 per cent to almost 4.2 million.

This was a decrease of 19 per cent when compared with 2019 passenger figures for long haul while short haul was 14 per cent down.

During 2022, passenger numbers to and from continental Europe increased by 198 per cent on the previous year to 15.9 million.

The number of passengers travelling to and from Dublin Airport and the UK declined by 24 per cent versus 2019 and increased by 257 per cent versus 2021 to 7.8 million.

Passenger numbers on flights to and from other international destinations, which includes flights to the Middle East, increased by 302 per cent compared with 2021.