Wednesday, May 7th, 2008. Cork Airport recorded a 9% increase in passenger figures during the first four months of 2008 compared with last year. In total 1,004,777 passengers used the Airport in the past four months, an increase of 82,475 passengers on the same period last year.

"The vital role played by air transport in our region and the commitment of airlines to enhancing services have seen passenger demand increase and Cork Airport has handled record volumes of traffic so far this year", said Kevin Cullinane, Marketing Manager, Cork Airport.

"Increases to frequency and capacity on routes operated both by Aer Lingus and Ryanair have been a significant contributing factor to the growth achieved so far this year, helping to make Cork and the Greater Munster region more accessible", he added.

Connectivity to and from London Heathrow with Aer Lingus has been boosted by an increase in seat capacity by the larger Airbus 321 aircraft operating five times daily this summer and an increase in passenger numbers of 14.5% in the first four months of 2008. Ryanair’s new services from Glasgow and Nottingham have contributed an additional 44,000 passengers from January to April inclusive.

The withdrawal of the Krakow, Warsaw and Wroclaw services by Centralwings slowed growth to and from Central and Eastern Europe for the first four months of the year. However, the continued connectivity offered by both Wizz Air and SkyEurope has helped boost overall passengers to and from Europe by 4%.

New Aer Lingus, Ryanair and Aer Arann scheduled services this summer to Jersey, Carcassonne, La Rochelle and Brest as well as new holiday flights to Santorini with XL.com this summer will see the Airport develop new traffic over the next six months. This will add to new services started by Air Southwest to Newquay and Plymouth in the past 10 days.

The Cork-Dublin route remains the second most popular route into and out of Cork Airport after London Heathrow with over 142,000 passengers flying between the Republic’s two largest cities in the first four months of the year.

"All in all, it has been four months of strong performance across the range of Irish, UK, Central and Eastern European destinations served by Cork Airport and we look forward to achieving further developments with our airline partners during the year," said Kevin Cullinane.

-ENDS-