Traffic Figures For Shannon Airport
Those figures are exactly what we'd have guessed. It's still a little weird to see it confirmed.
To recap, I set the figures out in post 1652 on page 83 of this thread. There were 24 free Santa flights. 189 seats on each would make it a little over 4,500 passengers. If Shannon counted these 4,500 people as both arriving and departing, it would boost their figures by 9,000.
We now see the statistics, and Shannon's 2013 domestic passengers are shown as increasing from 1,393 to 10,389. That's an increase of 8,996. Almost exactly what we'd guessed.
I still find it hard to credit that they'd pay to fly 4,500 people around in a circle, and count it as 9,000 passengers. I expect they'll get away with it, too. It's a fact that people just won't know what to do with, it's so crackers.