Onan. .. .Not so surprising really. . .. .It is an island. It has to be accessed from the rest of the UKGB and Europe by air or sea (except from ROI). . .. .There are some 1.6m people in Northern Ireland which is served by three airports:. .. .Belfast International 3.5m pax per annum. .Belfast City 1.5m pax. .City of Derry 0.3m pax. .. .So 1.6m plus say another 300,000 people living in the Republic of Ireland which the NI airports serve equals 1.9m generating 5.3m pax whereas in the South with a population of 3.5m there are around 17.5 pax being generated. . .. .Dublin 13.5m. .Shannon 2.5m. .Cork 1m. .Others say (eg Galway, Knock, etc) 0.5m. .. .So the multiples are NI 2.8 and ROI 5.0. Given that tourism represents about 2% GDP in the north and 6% in the south (which has been more economically active recently) then it is likely that this goes some way to explaining the difference. It doesn't totally. Some one else may know the detail.. .. .BA pulled out of the LHR-BFS operation in Oct 2001 with only partial replacement by bmi, there would seem to be an opportunity to generate more pax trips. However, we then move into a question of yield and this could be what eJ see. . .. .Look at the performance of the Belfast-Northwest of Engalnd market, there has been a doubling of traffic on the routes since eJ started. They will be doing 7 a day to BFS ex LPL (c600K pax)whereas 3 years ago there was a service which only generated 50K pax per annum (and 250k ex MAN). .Low fares can create markets.. .. .The low fare boys have encouraged other developments check out BE's pricing and entry fares ex BHD - £25. This would have been unheard of two to three years ago.. .. .However, splitting traffic as thay do in NI that's another issue. Compare with Montreal, Milan etc.. .. .Hope this helps.. .. .P.S. The above numbers are a rough guide.. . . . <small>[ 26 March 2002, 17:19: Message edited by: Avro Arrow ]</small>