Irish budget airline Ryanair (FR/RYR) has called on the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) to scrap the 32 million passenger cap at Dublin Airport (DUB/EIDW) after it was warned it would not receive extra slots for sporting events or extra Christmas flights.
The cap means that Dublin Airport is currently running to 100% of its allowed traffic despite having the capacity to handle more passengers and the IAA have also said that to comply with the cap, which was introduced in 2007, it will need to reduce summer 2025 flights from Dublin Airport by up to 1 million passengers.
Ryanair claims the cap is hurting Irish tourism and will lead to higher fares for passengers looking to fly from Dublin and will affect all airlines, not just Ryanair.
In a statement, Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said: “We have been calling for 2 years on Transport Minister Eamon Ryan to scrap this stupid 2007 traffic cap. Sadly, he has failed to act, preferring to hide behind “the planning process”. This planning restriction, which dates from 2007, was designed to address fears that road access to/from the airport would not be able to facilitate traffic over 32m per year. It is clear that this concern is no longer valid and since road traffic is not an issue, Minister Ryan should instruct the IAA to ignore this 17-year-old cap.“
Dublin Airport has recently opened a new second runway which together with other infrastructure changes gives the airport the capacity to handle up to 60 million passengers per year prompting Mr O’Leary to target the Irish Government saying: “Irish tourism and Irish jobs should not be damaged by a 17-year-old, defective planning restriction, or an incompetent Transport Minister. An effective Transport Minister would scrap this cap. Since he won’t, we now call on the wider Irish Govt to scrap this cap and allow Dublin Airport, Irish airlines and Irish tourism to continue to grow Irish traffic and jobs in Winter 2024 and Summer 2025.”
The traffic cap was put in place when Dublin airport reached 32 million passengers and was largely over fears of increased traffic to and from the airport causing severe congestion. According to Ryanair this has not happened and traffic is flowing freely around the airport thanks largely it says, to increased use of public transport by passengers.
