The FINANCIAL — Dublin Airport is looking forward to a record summer this year with four new airlines and a total of 14 new routes/services.
More than 1.7 million extra seats have been added across the airport’s route network, which is an 8% increase in capacity when compared to last summer, according to Dublin Airport.
New airlines, Cathay Pacific, Croatia Airlines, Hainan Airlines and Icelandair will join Dublin Airport’s growing list of airline customers.
The new routes/services comprise five long-haul and nine short-haul destinations which are being added to Dublin Airport’s flight schedule for this summer
Of the five new long-haul routes, Aer Lingus has already started services to Philadelphia and the airline will launch its Seattle route in May. This June will see the start of Air Canada’s new summer service to Montreal, Cathay Pacific will fly direct to Hong Kong and Hainan Airlines will commence a new direct service to Beijing.
This summer will be even busier than last year, according to Dublin Airport Managing Director, Vincent Harrison. “We are continuously working with existing and new airline customers to provide more choice for consumers and to add new destinations to our route network. We are particularly looking forward to welcoming our new services into the Asia Pacific region when direct services to Hong Kong and Beijing start in June.”
The number of seats to and from North America is up 14%, with an extra 391,000 seats this year. The peak summer months will see 10 airlines flying 446 flights per week to and from 16 destinations in the US and four destinations in Canada, which equates to an average of 64 flights daily to and from North America.
Overall capacity on existing European routes is set to increase by 8% with an extra one million additional seats this summer.
Dublin Airport has nine new continental European services to choose from this summer. Ryanair has started new services to Marrakesh and Paphos and the airline will add Dalaman, Frankfurt and Luxembourg to its route network later this year. Icelandair will commence a new service to Reykjavik, British Airways will fly to Manchester, Croatia Airlines will launch services to Zagreb and Loganair will operate flights to Carlisle Airport in the Lake District.
More than six million passengers have travelled through Dublin Airport in the first quarter of this year, representing a 4% increase, or an extra 248,500 passengers, compared to the same period last year.
This summer Dublin Airport will have flights to 195 destinations in 42 countries, operated by 56 airlines.
