Dublin and Cork airport operator daa recorded a profit after tax of €82.1m in the first half of the year, up 44% on the same period last year.
The boost in profit came off the back of a 10% increase in group turnover to €504.3m during the six months.
Revenue from daa's domestic businesses climbed 15% to €389.3m.
Group Earnings Before Interest Tax Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 33% to €162.2m.
Operating costs crept up by 2% to €257.3m
The performance came as passenger numbers through the two airports rose to 17.9 million over the period, up 5% on the same period last year.
"I am pleased with the strong financial and operational performance in the first half of 2024 driven by cost management and efficiency," said Kenny Jacobs, chief executive of daa.
"This is a credit to the efforts of our employees across the business at home and overseas."
"The continued growth in passenger numbers and revenue reflects the robust demand from both passengers and airlines alike to grow their business at our airports."
But the airports boss warned that strong headwinds lie ahead because of the passenger cap in Dublin.
Introduced as part of planning permission for the second terminal in 2007, it limits the number of passengers who can use Dublin Airport to 32 million a year, a threshold that will be breached this year.
Mr Jacobs said this would hit the group’s performance in the second half of the year and next year.
"While we continue to encourage and incentivise our airline partners to grow at Cork, our ability to grow to match demand for international travel by a growing Irish population is currently curtailed at Dublin given the 2007 passenger cap," he said.
"Less seats this winter and next summer is going to result in higher air fares and less choice for the travelling public unfortunately until the cap gets resolved by planning permission being granted."
"We hope planning can move faster, we submitted our 40 million passenger application almost one year ago and we expect it could take a further two years before this is approved. We are also working on a comprehensive 'no build’ operational application to remove the cap in the coming months that we hope can move through the planning process faster," he added.
The first half results also show that aeronautical revenue increased by 21% to €157.1m while domestic non-aeronautical revenue grew by 12% to €232.3m, driven by strong food and beverage sales, retail sales, and other passenger-related services.
Profits before tax from the group’s international retail, consultancy, and management business, jumped from €10.5m to €14.2m.
