The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
Shannon Airport’s strong momentum across 2014 has continued into the final month of the autumn, with passenger numbers for October showing a 28% increase on the same period twelve months ago.
The biggest gains in passengers through the terminal were again on European services, which were up by 63% on the same period 12 months ago thanks to a range of nine attractive new routes that were launched for the summer season (April through to end of October).
Eight of those were on the European market, which resulted in a 111% increase (from 20,347 to 42,950) in passengers to and from the continent last month compared to October 2013.
Transatlantic passengers were up by 15% (from 23,511 to 27,108) thanks to the increased frequency across New York and Boston services this year, with Shannon’s biggest market, the UK, up by 6% (from 61,681 to 65,243).
Welcoming the growth, Airport CEO Neil Pakey said, “It’s been a really great summer season for Shannon and finished out with a very strong October. A very encouraging aspect to the growth is that there were gains across our three main markets, Europe, the UK and US.
“Increases in European services are particularly strong thanks to the nine new services this summer season but the US also performed very well as a result of greater frequencies. It was also heartening to see growth on UK services as this is the strongest market for Ireland and a 6% percentage growth month-over-month is quite significant.
Mr Pakey said that with six year services this winter season compared to last year’s growth should continue over the coming months. “We have new winter services this year to Berlin, Bristol, Fuerteventura, Krakow, Paris and Warsaw. These, together with our other winter services, provide a really strong array of destinations for weekend or winter sun breaks as well as for business travelers.
“It’s good news also for the region as our winter schedule this year has really good options from an inbound perspective, which is particularly good for tourism operators here as there is a really good winter break offering across the West of Ireland.”
