By Declan Hasson
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has recently published statistics for the full year 2023 for Northern Ireland’s three airports: Belfast International, Belfast City, and City of Derry.
Overall, Northern Ireland’s airport traffic for 2023 is up on the previous year, but has yet to reach the levels of business achieved in the ‘benchmark’ year of 2019.
Whereas, the two Belfast gateways are now powering ahead, having handled a total of 8,072,000 passengers in 2023, compared to 6,473,000 in 2022, City of Derry has seen its passenger throughput fall from 163,000 to 154,000.
In percentage terms, the Belfast airports have seen traffic levels grow by 25%, while, for the same time period, City of Derry has experienced a fall of 6%.
Data released by the CAA for the 2023 year shows that Belfast International is edging close to its 2019 figures, coming up short by just 5%.
Belfast City has still some way to go in matching its 2,455,000 passengers handled in 2019. Although 14% down as against 2019, the 28% improvement when comparing to 2022 is encouraging.
Both Belfast International and Belfast City can expect to be back to and probably exceeding 2019 levels of business in the current year. Traffic growth is being driven by both base and network expansion at the two main airports, with easyJet in particular continuing to be very proactive.
Ryanair returned to the International in 2023, basing two aircraft, operating 140 flights per week to 16 destinations across GB and Europe.
The growth at the International is coming from increased activity in both markets with Europe representing 23% of all passenger traffic.
The four main carriers at the airport, EasyJet, Ryanair, Jet 2 and TUI are all developing the leisure market significantly, having operated 21 new destinations for the 2023 summer season. This makes Belfast International Northern Ireland’s principal airport for both sun and ski holiday destinations.
easyJet will be basing a ninth aircraft at the International this year to help drive the planned growth, after having operated its biggest ever summer flying programme in 2023 with 9.4% more capacity than pre-pandemic. Northern Ireland is a strong market for easyJet, having flown a record 4.6 million passengers to and from Belfast in the last year.
Aer Lingus Regional (Emerald Airlines) is now handling 40% of all traffic at the City Airport, operating 12 of the 30 routes on offer. EasyJet is the next biggest carrier with flights to 8 destinations, 6 of which are domestic.
British Airways operates to both Heathrow and London City but surprisingly it has seen a 6% drop in passenger numbers on the Heathrow route in the most recent year. However, it is somewhat complicated as the airline provides wet lease services to Aer Lingus UK on the Heathrow route due to complexities following Brexit.
KLM and Lufthansa fly from Belfast City to Amsterdam and Frankfurt respectively, but account for relatively few passenger numbers in the overall scheme of things.
At City of Derry, the 6% fall in passenger numbers in 2023 leaves the airport 25% adrift from the 2019 ‘benchmark’ year.
Manchester and London (Heathrow replaced Stansted during the year) accounted for 123,000 passengers which represented 80% of all traffic.
Ryanair have recently announced increased frequency on its Manchester service and a return to the Birmingham route in late April, operating twice weekly.
Loganair, who provide daily services on the Heathrow route with 49 seater Embraer 145 aircraft, are to increase frequency from this summer.
However, Loganair’s decision to scrap flights to Liverpool in October last year was a blow and makes recovery at City Of Derry that much more challenging.
This year the airport will be pinning its hopes on a number of seasonal charters to Palma and Faro, ski packages to Verona and pilgrimage flights to Lourdes to address some of the shortfall in passenger numbers.
Getting back to 2019 levels of business will be somewhat of an uphill climb for City of Derry, but for the Belfast airports they are both well on their way.
Number of Passengers handled by Northern Ireland’s Airports For the Years 2019, 2022 and 2023 (Rounded)
| Airport | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | % Change 2019-2023 | % Change 2022 – 2023 |
| Belfast International | 6,278,000 | 4,818,000 | 5,957,000 | -5% | +24% |
| Belfast City | 2,455,000 | 1,655,000 | 2,115,000 | -14% | +28% |
| City of Derry | 204,000 | 163,000 | 154,000 | -25% | -6% |
| Totals | 8,937,000 | 6,636,000 | 8,226,000 | -8% | +24% |
