Over 50,000 US troops passed through Shannon Airport in the first four months of this year, figures published yesterday by Aer Rianta confirmed.
The figures show that during the month of April, some 11,329 US troops in 123 flights stopped off at Shannon Airport en route to US air bases in mainland Europe, the Persian Gulf and the US.
April's total brings the overall number of troops to 50,914 for the first four months of this year. This compares to 73,000 military personnel that passed through Shannon during 2002, which earned Aer Rianta's Shannon operation €9 million.
According to an Aer Rianta spokeswoman, transit movements through the airport increased during April with the return of World Airways, North American and Miami Air International operating through Shannon.
All three commercial airlines are employed by the US military to transport troops and were involved in the build-up to the US war against Iraq.
Anti-war activists damaged a US navy aircraft on January 29th and another incident occurred on February 4th. Later, Aer Rianta announced that World Airways would not be using Shannon for the immediate future, stressing that the decision was not linked to security issues. Miami Air and North American Airways pulled out shortly afterwards, despite the Irish army being drafted in to protect the airports from further security breaches.
On the return of these airlines to Shannon, the airport director, Mr Martin Moroney, said yesterday: "While these transit operations represent good business for Shannon, they account for a very small proportion of our overall passenger throughput. We are concentrating all our efforts on developing year-round scheduled services from Europe, the UK and United States."
