Press Statement

Preasráiteas

15 December 2021

Go to release: Aviation Statistics Quarter 3 2021

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (15 December 2021) published Aviation Statistics for Quarter 3 2021. Passenger numbers are received for the five main airports: Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock and Kerry.

Commenting on the release, Dr Nele van der Wielen, Statistician, said: “The figures show a substantial decline in international travel during Q3 2021 compared to 2019 but show increases in comparison with Q3 2020. In Q3 2021, 1.8 million passengers travelled to Ireland and almost 1.8 million passengers departed from Ireland. These numbers represent a fall of 69% in both the number of passengers arriving to Ireland and departing from Ireland, when compared with the same period in 2019.

Data for September 2021 shows that passenger numbers were more than three times higher than September 2020, but were still 59% lower than September 2019.

The amount of air freight handled by the main airports increased by 23% to 39,272 tonnes in the third quarter of 2021 when compared with the same period in 2020 and increased by 4% when compared to Q3 2019.”

Further commenting on the results, Nele van der Wielen said: “Nine out of every 10 passengers (92%) on international flights were travelling to or from Europe. Within Europe, the United Kingdom and Spain were the most popular routes. While outside of Europe the most popular routes were to or from the United States of America.”

-- ENDS --