Cork Airport: Managing Director Niall Maccarthy

Managing Director Niall MacCarthy

Munster’s reputation for tourism is flourishing. Cork Airport is uniquely situated at the gateway of the Wild Atlantic Way and we’re delighted to welcome visitors through our arrivals every day to experience it. One of its star attractions is Kinsale — just 20 minutes’ drive from Cork Airport — with its unrivalled cuisine, beauty and heritage.

We’re responding to this growing appeal of tourism to the west of Ireland through expansion. However, we’re acutely aware of the challenges Brexit poses and face into 2020 with great consideration and planning.

Cork Airport, Ireland’s most punctual airport, is in its fifth consecutive year of growth, with passenger numbers this year forecast to reach 2.7 million — up 5% on 2019. This strong passenger growth, along with the announcement of 11 new routes in the past year, reflects our clear commitment, with the support of the daa Group, on growing Cork Airport.

Underpinning this growth is the expansion in our route network, with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines launching a daily service between Cork and Amsterdam Schiphol Airport from 30 March. This is a significant boost for the Munster region, with connectivity to KLM’s extensive network of

170 destinations worldwide.

We’re delighted Ryanair is to commence a new service from Cork to Zadar for its summer 2020 schedule in April. Ryanair also extended a new route from our winter 2019/2020 schedule to Katowice in Poland, into our summer schedule.

Air France is doubling its frequency on the Cork to Paris-Charles de Gaulle route with the addition of a second daily service from April to October. This will offer connectivity to Air France’s network of flights to 195 destinations.

There are now over 50 routes on offer from Cork to the UK and continental

Europe, with further expansions including SWISS, who will extend its 2020 summer season to Zurich by four weeks.

Despite this growth, we’re delighted that what sets Cork Airport apart from others — its friendliness, accessibility and convenience — remains. Anyone who uses our Airport — outbound and inbound (inbound accounted for 44% of our passengers in 2019), know we pride ourselves on the smoothness of the passenger journey.

This is all down to the staff who work round the clock, 365 days of the year, to make that journey friendly and easy. This attention-to-detail is reflected in the awards we have won, such as Airport Council International’s prestigious Best Airport in Europe Award (serving under 5 million passengers) in 2019 and 2017.

Our excellent team work hard to deliver a great Airport experience and are committed to growing our offering, with support of the daa Group, for the benefit of passengers across the South of Ireland and beyond globally.”