Probably emphasises the need for just one belfast airport , especially after news of the 500,000 pax who go to Dublin !!
Gazmo,
While I would be a firm supporter of one airport for Belfast, I am not going to even go there as regards which one as some get far to emotional about it and the thread becomes boring.!
However, in terms of related to pax going to Dublin, I think we need to be realistic, there is a whole host of destinations that we simply dont have and Dublin does, and hence it is not just about being competitive its about the range of destinations, and again we have a small local population, a much smaller inbound tourism than DUB has. So we need to keep focusing on sustainable routes and not get too hung up on trying to capture that people going down to Dublin.
In addition, I referred to before, at least a quarter of the NI population (and equally all people in the border counties, Donegal, Cavan, Louth etc. find Belfast a suitable alternative to Dublin, whats the stats for them going to Belfast?) will find DUB more convenient or just as convenient as Belfast. Hence we again need to be realistic about what we can capture of that 500,000 people.
The international traffic stats dont make for awful reading, in a period of recession, year on year, we had a total decline from Belfast Airport on these routes of almost 24k people, that about 3%. Dublin in % terms not far away from that, so much for the 500k pax that are attracting. So that would suggest to me it is not a new phenonomen its always been on that scale, and if anything over the last decade we have been developing more scheduled routes and hence can provide better offer to the customer.
EI-BUD