Why does Dublin Airport have to expand?

[Podolski]

With the second terminal and extra runway approved for Dublin Airport which will eventually give the airport the capacity to handle 60 million passengers every year.

Why?

The Republic of Ireland has a population of just over 4 million
Tourists visiting here last year were 7.7 million of whom 6.5 million flew (not all of them into Dublin).

Even with a projected population of 6 million by 2040 and a similar rise in tourism I can't see why Dublin needs a capacity for 60 million.

Then there's the Global Warming factor and the real link between air travel and atmospheric carbon levels, not to mention the possible fuel crisis of Peak Oil.

I haven't included the North because they have their own international airport at Aldergrove plus Belfast City airport.

Why all the concentration at Dublin? , why not develop a second genuine international airport at Cork or Shannon? I mean genuine because at the moment Shannon is a regional airport with a set down for transatlantic flights while Cork is still primarily a regional with the bulk of its other flights to the UK.

Opinions please!

[White Horse]

Why all the concentration at Dublin? , why not develop a second genuine international airport at Cork or Shannon? I mean genuine because at the moment Shannon is a regional airport with a set down for transatlantic flights while Cork is still primarily a regional with the bulk of its other flights to the UK.

The ROI is Dublin-centric and regionalisation is pure tokenism.

[thejuggler]

Cork is still primarily a regional with the bulk of its other flights to the UK.

You are somewhat misinformed when it comes to Cork Airports flights. The following destinations are served by scheduled services operating out of Cork together with many more holiday charters

Alicante
Amsterdam
Barcelona
Belfast
Berlin
Birmingham
Bratislava (Vienna)
Bristol
Budapest
Cardiff
Dublin
Edinburgh
Faro
Galway
Gdansk
Jersey
Katowice
Krakow
Lanzarote
Leeds Bradford
Liverpool
London Gatwick
London Heathrow
London Stansted
Lorient
Madrid
Malaga
Manchester
Nantes
Newcastle
Newquay
Nice
Paris
Prague
Rome
Southampton
Tenerife
Warsaw
Wroclaw

Cork should have transatlantic services but it is being strangled by the Dublin Airport Authority who still control the purse strings.

[Wolverine]

Well the place is bursting at the seams at present.

That said, there is a genuine issue out there regarding global warming and peak oil and the development of airports. At present air travel is expanding rapildy but with peak oil looming and carbon taxes in the pipeline, we may end up building expensive follies.

[Limerick Lad]

The proposed €850million would be better spent building a new airport on a greenfield site rather than expansion at the already traffic gridlocked present location.

[solair]

Ireland's an island, we don't have a lot of ways of getting to places without airports.

Dublin Airport's just too small at present. Expansion is absolutely essential the place is currently absolute chaos. It's grossly over capacity at the moment. Going through it is like a form of torture at present.

Cork's quite likely going to be over-stretched in the next few years too, although that airport's designed with expansion in mind. The terminal can have a peer extension done quite easily and it's pretty much in the design already.

I would completely agree, we need to look at propper regional development. It's crazy the way that development seems to be planned on the basis of "Dublin" and "Down the Country" rather than actually looking at properly developing our major cities. It's killing Dublin and starving Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford from vital investment.

[tunnel vision]

With the second terminal and extra runway approved for Dublin Airport which will eventually give the airport the capacity to handle 60 million passengers every year.

Why?

The Republic of Ireland has a population of just over 4 million
Tourists visiting here last year were 7.7 million of whom 6.5 million flew (not all of them into Dublin).

Even with a projected population of 6 million by 2040 and a similar rise in tourism I can't see why Dublin needs a capacity for 60 million.

Then there's the Global Warming factor and the real link between air travel and atmospheric carbon levels, not to mention the possible fuel crisis of Peak Oil.

I haven't included the North because they have their own international airport at Aldergrove plus Belfast City airport.

Why all the concentration at Dublin? , why not develop a second genuine international airport at Cork or Shannon? I mean genuine because at the moment Shannon is a regional airport with a set down for transatlantic flights while Cork is still primarily a regional with the bulk of its other flights to the UK.

Opinions please!

Opinions in reverse order, building an airport is not difficult, people who never built an airport before built one in Knock; there are planning and safety regulations but no quantitive restrictions like say operating a mobile phone system. The cry of monopoly by Ryanair for Dublin Airport is just not true because of the ease of entering the market. Shannon has a longer main runway than Dublin and its Terminal capacity is around 5.5 million passengers per annum while it currently handles just over 3 million. There are under utilised airports in every county with an Atlantic coast except Leitrim. So it is the airlines and their passengers who decide where they want to fly to and at the moment that is mostly Dublin. Look at the number of coach services from around the country that offer services to Dublin Airport. Look at Manchester and Liverpool Airports, less than twenty miles apart in a region of over 10 million people. Manchester 22 million passengers and Liverpool I think about 5. People will use the airport with the best range of services and best fares.

Belfast is less than 100 miles down mostly a motorway from Dublin Airport. If you use the car parks at Dublin Airport you will notice the number of NI cars, a lot more than ROI cars in Belfast. I have often seen NI taxies dropping off passengers at Dublin. Again people will use the airport with the best range of services and best fares.

Ireland is not going to suffer from peak oil or global warming, did you not know that, why else would we have the highest SUVs per capita in Europe, we are turning every second main road into a motorway, or our government would not introduce higher insulation standards for new houses (until the very last minute) when we were building more houses per capita than anybody in the world??

Heathrow handles about 60 million passengers pa with a population in the UK of I think about 60 million. So who can explain the high numbers at Dublin Airport? Island nation, Celtic Tiger, low fares, tourists, are some of the reasons. The bottom line is that people just want to use it.

So if you have the spare cash there is a lot of stripped bog in the midlands very flat very cheap beside railways and mororways whynot start an airport business.

[Rebel CNC]

[quote="tunnel vision

Heathrow handles about 60 million passengers pa with a population in the UK of I think about 60 million. So who can explain the high numbers at Dublin Airport? Island nation, Celtic Tiger, low fares, tourists, are some of the reasons. The bottom line is that people just want to use it.

So if you have the spare cash there is a lot of stripped bog in the midlands very flat very cheap beside railways and mororways whynot start an airport business.[/quote]

London is also served by Gatwick, Stansted and City airports not to mention the Eurostar train service.

Dublin is the 15th busiest airport in Europe but is tiny in comparison with airports handling similar passenger numbers. As with all transport projects in this country, the expansion should have happened years ago.

[Supersid]

The proposed €850million would be better spent building a new airport on a greenfield site rather than expansion at the already traffic gridlocked present location.

There are (long overdue) plans to link the airport with the city centre using the metro, adding another airport would only double the need for public transport links.

[odie1kanobe]

Gatwick is a single runway airport similar to Dublin and handles just shy of 40 million people per year with 2 terminals and an integrated railway, (to be fair the railway was there first as the site was a racecourse) and they desperately need a second runway but someone gave an undertasking in 1979 that there wouldn't be a runway built for 50 yrs and they are getting held to it.