It's called sustainable growth, it's a more realistic reflection. No airport can deliver double digit growth long term.

If you look back at passenger stats over the last 20 years just 3 years had double digit year on year growth most recently 2015/2016 the rest was between 5-8%.

Was trying to make the point to BFS Watcher that 6% growth is a clear sign of success, no matter how you look at it.

6% growth heaped on top of 10% (?) growth in 2016 is hardly grounds for shadenfreude from Aldergrove.

What? With 900,000 now travelling on BFS-LGW. Eh, no we are a constituent part of the United Kingdom, we use GBP.

Much deeper problems than currency you know.

Double-digit growth and growth that massively fluctuates are generally signs of a small airport. At Dublin's current scale, neither is hugely likely.

If Aer Lingus/Ryanair were to add and A320/B737 at Cork or Shannon, they are likely to get double-digit growth (and more than likely no growth the following year as another airframe is very unlikely). If the same happens in Dublin it may add 1% to the figures.

Ni is a price sensitive market so we are seeing growth because we are introducing carriers who produce lower costs and more affordable flights. I don't see why the growth couldn't stay if we had more of this.

I think Norweigan is what we need for TATL, for example, rather than United.

I agree, it's very leisure oriented, cost sensitive and seasonal. VS expanding is great for NI also.

You're missing a basic maths issue here. 6% of 27.9m passengers is 1.7m! This is almost one third of total BFS numbers! Doing big % increases on a large number is not sustainable but high single digit on a large number is far from failure!

What are you expecting from the cabin crew?

Maybe you could give a detailed explanation of your flight and then we could judge.

...but (gentle hint) maybe in a forum other than this one which is about Dublin routes, airport developments etc? Perhaps "Passengers and SLF" where a discussion of individual Aer Lingus passenger experience would be more relevant? :ok:

Sorry, i'll not ruin your life with my presence.

Having a bad day, are we? This forum is about Dublin airport, and information about new schedules/aircraft/developments etc at Dublin airport (see above: "topics about airports, routes and airline business"). The passengers and SLF forum is about discussing the passenger experience, and I'm just suggesting it might be more relevant for a (non-airport-specific) discussion about one airline's business class versus another. That's all.

Unfortunate timing for the new QR route with the political situation there, hope the daily frequency can be sustained initially.

Any news on the rumored Hainan China route?

Belfast Airport aims ?Bexit? campaign at travellers from Republic

Er you do realise that BFS is advertising for passengers from Irish Republic.........

As for tourism numbers being down, car hire agency used in BFS said that 50% of the cars they are hiring out for longer than 2 days are being used by people who will cross the border.
Site manager's assessment was that reduction of visitors from UK will have a 3 month lag from Dublin to Belfast but it will follow on from it and numbers will be down.

Parting shot was maybe there will be an uplift from Tory politicians crawling to the DUP.

I am presuming the grass being tunred and uplifted at the airport yesterday was being turned into sileage.

The simple fact is, we don't ultimately know what will happen with Brexit. Soft,...little change....hard...losses in some sectors but potential to chase business from multinational UK based airlines requiring an EU AOC.

Then there's the potential terrorist issues affecting US Transfer visitors' perception of UK, France, Europe as a whole.

Then there's the UK economy itself. Various experst claimed it would go off a cliff immediately after Brexit vote, didn't happen. And yet new mortgage approvals are drastically down in last quarter, a worrying sign. Who do we belive eh?

Weak sterling? Positives and negatives, all depends how it pans out. Would cut number of UK vistors looking to EU and North America, but would greatly appeal to pax inbound to UK from these markets, as well as making UK tourists look east to weaker currencies. I'm certainly not willing to bet on how things will look in 2 years, that's for sure.

Drop in Great Britain tourism won't affect us. We have back/forth relationship since we are in the same country and use GBP not Euros.

If as indicated that 50% of hire car comps business is to hirers visiting whole of Ireland then how does NI become immune ?

On picking up I counted approx 10 cars with ROI plates in hire car drop off area who clearly had 1 way car hires and using BFS to fly from. The idea that BFS is immune is laughable.

I and friends could just as easily used Dub but we needed to be in a specific place flying from BFS early and we pretty much spent time all our in ROI.

On other occasions BFS will not be suitable.

I'm specifically referring to flying not car hire.

On an inward flight of real visitors (i,e exculding Residents arriving back) the car hire companys reckon that 20 -30 % will hire a car.

Suprised at the stats I have spoken with number of different rental agencies and they view it that a flight of circa 170 people coming into UK and Ireland smaller airports that 60% of passengers are returning residents or to family, Of the remaing 70 odd tourists there is an expect conversion factor of 20% i,e circa 14 cars rented, sometimes high as 30% sometimes lower but that is the conversion factor.

Rental agencies see the reduction in tourism numbers very quickly as their car fleets do not move.

As I said Belfast had lots of ROI registered cars there and last time dropped off in Dublin there were prob 3-4 NI cars at the off site rental place for just one agency,

SEN-DUB recommences on the 29th October 2017 with 18 weekly flights by Flybe/Stobart Air