New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that the number of air passengers travelling to and from Ireland in 2022 was still down by 15% compared with the numbers in 2019 - before the outbreak of Covid-19 restricted international travel.
The CSO said that over 23 million more passengers used Irish airports in 2022 compared with 2021, but that was still 5.5 million fewer passengers than pre-pandemic 2019 figures.
Today's figures show that almost 11.8 million more passengers travelled to Ireland in 2022 when compared with 2021 - 2.7 million fewer passengers when compared with 2019.
In 2022, 16.2 million passengers departed from Ireland. This was 11.6 million more than in 2021, but still fewer by 2.8 million when compared with 2019.
During the fourth quarter of 2022, 8.2 million passengers passed through Irish airports, today's CSO figures show.
This was 3.7 million more passengers when compared with the same three month period in 2021 but 0.3 million fewer than the same time in 2019 before the outbreak of Covid-19.
Today's CSO figures show that over 236,000 flights were handled by Ireland's five main airports - Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock and Kerry - last year.
Dublin Airport handled 84% of all flights (199,464), while Cork handled 7% of all flights (16,592).
London-Heathrow, London-Gatwick and Amsterdam-Schiphol were the most popular routes for passengers travelling through Dublin airport in 2022.
The top route for Cork and Shannon airports was London-Heathrow, for Knock airport it was London-Stansted, and for Kerry airport it was London-Luton.
Meanwhile, air freight handled by Irish airports in 2022 was down 1% compared with 2021, the CSO also said today.
