Press Statement

Preasráiteas

17 June 2020

Go to release: Aviation Statistics Quarter 1 2020

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (17 June 2020) published Aviation Statistics for Quarter 1 2020. Passenger numbers are received for the five main airports: Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock and Kerry.

Commenting on the release, Olive Loughnane, Statistician, said:

’The figures show a substantial drop in international travel during Q1 2020. There were modest increases in passenger numbers for January and February. Data for March 2020 shows a drop of 57.5% compared to the same month in 2019. This is associated with restrictions imposed due to COVID-19.

In Quarter 1 of 2020, almost 3.0 million passengers travelled to Ireland and 2.9 million passengers departed from Ireland. These numbers represent a drop of 20.1% (752,629) and 20.7% (766,567) respectively, when compared to the same period in 2019.

The amount of air freight handled by the main airports increased by 14.1% to 37,135 tonnes in the first three months of 2020 when compared with the same period in 2019.’

Today’s figures also show a breakdown by route. In Q1 2020, almost nine out of every ten passengers (88.5%) on international flights were travelling to or from Europe. Within Europe, the United Kingdom and Spain were the most popular routes.

Outside of Europe the most popular routes were to or from the United States of America.

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