AirportS tend to take credit and issue glowing press releases when traffic is up and blame the recession and every thing else that goes with it when traffic is falling. As far as Knock goes and increasingly Cork, the traffic patterns are likely to follow the whims of Ryanair for the forseeable future. They're the only airline interested in providing serious growth but the downside of that is that they can easily bring about a major decline in traffic if they so wish.