Dublin Airport's official end of year figures for 2005 show that over 18.4 million passengers travelled through the airport, up 8% on the figures for 2004. A total of 1.3 million extra passengers travelled through the airport last year - its 14th year of consecutive passenger growth.
Dublin Airport said the main contributors to this growth in traffic were its European and North Atlantic routes. European traffic grew by 18% with more than 9.1 million passengers travelling in 2005. This growth was a result of new European routes and larger aircraft on those routes.
Passenger numbers also grew by 14% on North American routes with over 1.2 million passengers using the airport's transatlantic routes.
However, traffic to and from the UK fell by 1% with just over 8.2 million passengers travelling last year. The decline was due to a reduction in capacity at Dublin Airport as well as a fall off in connecting traffic as a result of a growing direct network to the UK from other Irish airports.
Domestic traffic also fell by 5% to 650,000 passengers, the airport added.
During 2005 a total of 31 new routes began operations from Dublin Airport. The airport now has 50 scheduled airlines operating to 112 destinations internationally. More than 30 new services are planned for the first quarter of 2006.
'This is the 14th consecutive year of growth in passenger numbers at Dublin Airport and I am confident that this trend will continue in 2006,' commented the Director of Dublin Airport, Robert Hilliard.
'Our traffic forecasts indicate a very strong possibility that the airport will break the key 20 million passenger threshold for the first time later this year,' he predicted.
