Hardly room in the skies over Ireland for Santa!
If you thought there seemed to be a lot of planes overhead this year, then you’d be right.
In fact, over a million flights have gone through Irish airspace so far this year – and the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) has predicted that by December 31, that figure will surpass 1.1 million.
And much of it is down to Ryanair.
With just two weeks left in the year, the IAA says 2016 will be a record year for Irish aviation - and the IAA boss is predicting that fares in Europe will fall next year.
By the end of November, total flights safely handled by the IAA in 2016 stood at 1,026,000, up 8.6% on the same 11 months in 2015.
Eamonn Brennan, Chief Executive of the IAA said, "Growth is across all fields and not limited to one area. Cork and Shannon have both recorded gains in 2016, up 12% and 2.4% respectively.”
He continued: "There's no doubting it, the continued growth of Ryanair is phenomenal - they'll carry over 119 million passengers in 2016 (financial year ending March 2017).
“At the same time, Are Lingus have really capitalised on being part of the IAG group with a significant expansion of their Transatlantic operation (+15%).
“We’ve seen Dublin Airport going from strength to strength so the announcement to build the new parallel runway was a very important milestone and the recent positive decision by the US Government concerning Norwegian Air International is great news for both Cork and Shannon airports.”
Fares
Looking ahead he said, 2017 will be “a challenging year for the industry”.
He anticipates significant increases in available seat capacity, and says: “this is likely to drive down air fares in Europe”.