This article is from page 22 of the 2014-08-19 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 22 JPG
GOOD news keeps landing at Shannon Airport as as new figures from the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) confirm another impressive month of growth at the Clare Airport.
After passing out Cork Airport just last month, and reclaiming its position as Ireland’s second largest airport, Shannon begun to pull away from its Munster rival.
According to the new Air Traffic Figures for July, compiled by the IAA, Shannon Airport recorded an 18 per cent growth in the number of daily commercial flight coming through the airport compared to July of 2013.
More impressive than the percentage growth however is the number of commercial flights which are landing at the Clare airport each day.
An average of 74 daily commercial movements were recorded at Shannon Airport in July – the largest monthly average for more than four years. This compares to 66 daily commercial movement in Cork for the same period.
While commercial movement do not necessarily translate directly to passenger numbers, it is expected that Shannon Airport will also have passed out Cork Airport when those figures are released later this year.
This growth in traffic through Shannon Airport comes in the way of the decoupling of the airport from the Dublin Airport Authority. During 2012 Shannon Airport was close to being passed out by Knock Airport in Mayo as Ireland third busiest airport.
Meanwhile, the Central Statistic Office have compiled detailed figures for Shannon last year which show that the airport hosted 1,308,242 passengers last year – with four out of every ten passengers travelling to or from London.
The most popular route was Shannon to Heathrow which carried 258,000 passengers while Shannon-Stansted and Shannon-Gatwick hosted 183,000 and 104,000 respectively.
In the same year, more than 200,000 people travelled between Shannon and New York with 107,000 travelling from Shannon to Newark and 102 travelling from Shannon to JFK.