Number of passengers handled by Irish airports in 2017 hits record high

DUBLIN, April 19 (Xinhua) -- The number of passengers handled by Irish airports in 2017 set an eight-year record high of 34.4 million people, according to the statistics released by the country's national statistics bureau on Thursday.

Over the last eight years, the number of passengers handled by the Irish airports witnessed a consistent rise with the 2017 figure representing a 5.2 percent increase over 2016 and over 10 million passengers more while compared with 2010, said Central Statistics Office (CSO) of Ireland.

Dublin airport is the busiest airport in the country, which handled 85.3 percent of the total passengers in 2017, followed by the airport of Cork (6.7 percent), the second largest city in the country's south, said CSO, adding that the combined number of passengers handled by the top five Irish airports last year accounted for 99.8 percent of the country's total.

In 2017, almost nine out of every ten passengers traveling on international flights were traveling to or from Europe, said CSO

The two most popular countries of origin or destination were Britain and Spain, it said, adding that the United States was the most popular country of origin or destination outside of Europe.

CSO also said that the Irish airports handled a total of 163,956 tonnes of freight in 2017, up 11.7 percent over the previous year. The international freight accounted for 94.1 percent of the total freight handled by the Irish airports last year, it said. Enditem