Northern Ireland’s Airports – Statistics for Q2 (2024) and the first 6 months

Photos and Text by Declan Hasson

The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has recently published statistics for Quarter 2 (2024) for Northern Ireland’s 3 airports: Belfast International, Belfast City and the City of Derry.

The second quarter of 2024 (April – June) has seen passenger traffic continuing to increase when compared to 2023. Overall, passenger numbers are up +9.8% (see Table 1).

However, the rate of increase has fallen from Q1, which saw growth in excess of 25%. Despite that, the picture for City of Derry is more upbeat having recorded a 7.9% increase as compared to the same quarter in 2023.

But it is that all important “benchmark” year of 2019 upon which the airport operators are focused.

As Table 1 shows, only the International airport reported growth in Q2, when compared to the same period in 2019 – up 2.9%.

Table 1: Number of Passengers handled by Northern Ireland’s Airports For Q2 – 2019, 2023 and 2024

Conversely, Belfast City failed to achieve the 2019 levels of business, dropping 7.3% – a reversal in trend from where it had been after the first quarter of the year.

Looking back at 2019, it is important to note that in that year Ryanair were active at the Harbour airport and business travel would have been a significant part of the airport’s offering. Today, Ryanair no longer operates from the downtown facility and business travel is not as strong as it would have been pre-pandemic.

Interestingly, Aer Lingus (not Aer Lingus Regional) has recently announced that it plans to reduce services on its flagship route from Dublin to Heathrow this winter, because passenger numbers have failed to recover post-pandemic – largely because business people are flying less. This may be an issue for all Irish airports especially those airports that are particularly dependent on business travellers. Belfast City is a prime example.

The City of Derry airport has managed to arrest the decline in business for now, having reported a positive second quarter as compared to last year, but still well down when compared to 2019. The airport will be hoping that the recent announcement by easyJet that it is to launch services from Derry to both Edinburgh and Liverpool in November will boost yearly traffic above the 154,000 handled in 2023. Reaching the 204,000 passenger tally of 2019 is still someway off, but at least things are heading in the right direction.

The total number of passengers handled at the Northern Ireland airports in the second quarter of the year is broadly the same as compared to 2019. At just 1804 passengers short, the difference is negligible, but it indicates how sluggish the recovery from the pandemic years has been.

The prediction by experts, back in 2020, that it would take five years for the global aviation to fully recover now appears to be close to the mark.

Evidence of that sluggish recovery is also supported by ATC data that shows a 5% drop in traffic across the EU this year, when compared to 2019.

The figures for Northern Ireland’s airports for quarters 1 and 2 combined (January to June) as presented on Table 2, show that despite a 16.2% growth against last year, the position is less flattering when compared to the first six months of 2019.

Although close, it may well be the end of the year before Northern Ireland’s airports can finally make that all-important breakthrough in terms of surpassing the 2019 levels of business.

Table 2: Number of Passengers handled by Northern Ireland’s Airports For the First 6 Months – 2019, 2023 and 2024