2023 has proven to be the busiest year on record at Ireland West Airport with passenger numbers increasing by 13% to 818,000 for the first time in the airport’s history, surpassing the previous record of 807,000 passengers achieved in 2019.
The airport now serves 21 International destinations and is served by three of Europe’s major International airlines, Aer Lingus, Lauda Europe and Ryanair.
Passenger numbers travelling on services to and from the UK totalled 665,000 in 2023, boosted by the commencement of a new daily service to London Heathrow with Aer Lingus, which provides onward connectivity to 80+ destinations worldwide. Ryanair recorded its busiest ever year for passenger numbers at the airport carrying over 730,000 passengers, a 3% increase on 2022 with record numbers using their services to and from Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Manchester in the UK.
The number of passengers traveling on services to Mainland and Continental Europe hit a new high for the airport, with 148,000 passengers traveling to and from Alicante, Barcelona, Faro, Majorca, Malaga, Milan, Cologne, Lanzarote and Tenerife which represented a 7% increase on 2022 figures.
When compared to 2019, the previous busiest year on record, short-haul traffic to the UK increased by 19%, while passenger numbers traveling to sun and European city break destinations increased by 16%.
August proved to be the busiest month of the year with 102,000 passengers travelling through the airport during this period, with the busiest individual day of the year also occurring in August, when over 4,500 passengers travelled through the airport on Tuesday 29th August.
In total over 6,000 flights departed and arrived at the airport in 2023 with less than 10 flights impacted as a result of adverse weather at the airport, the lowest figure on record at the airport.
2023 saw continued investment in the Airport Transformation Programme, with a number of infrastructural projects completed during the course of 2023, aimed at transforming the facility and modernising the airport to ensure the facility will meet the future needs of both our airline customers and passengers.
One of the headline projects, completed in 2023, was the installation of a new next-generation cabin baggage screening system which is now fully operational at the airport. These new machines remove the need for passengers to remove laptops, phones and liquids from cabin bags and the restriction on liquids of more than 100ml no longer applies, which will further speed up the journey time through the airport.
In 2023 the airport also welcomed a record number of passengers from the Donegal region with, in the region of 30,000 customers from Donegal using the airport in 2023. Recent Red C research carried out in 2023 also showed that Donegal is a hugely popular region for overseas visitors travelling through Ireland West Airport. In 2023 in the region of 15,000 overseas visitors visited Donegal as part of their trip to Ireland spending on average of 6 nights in Donegal when they visit. The county proved hugely popular in particular with German visitors, with visitors from Cologne proving to be the biggest source of visitors to the region in 2023 from Mainland Europe.
