Overseas travel rebounded in February but still behind pre-pandemic levels

Overseas travel from Ireland has rebounded strongly since the end of Covid-19 restrictions but is still behind pre-pandemic levels, new figures suggest.

The number of passengers arriving in Ireland was up in February by 35 per cent on the previous month and the numbers departing was up by 40 per cent on January.

Last month 787,300 passengers arrived in Ireland on overseas routes and 785,200 passengers departed the State.

These figures contrast with the 54,800 passengers who arrived and 53,200 passengers who departed in February last year when Ireland was locked down as a result of the post-Christmas surge in Covid-19 deaths.

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Travel has yet to recover to what it was before the pandemic. In February 2020, the last month before the pandemic restrictions, there were 1,215,100 overseas visitors to Ireland and 1,203,300 departures.

Visitors to Ireland are therefore down 35 per cent on pre-pandemic levels and and Irish trips abroad are down 34 per cent.

Continental Europe

The strongest increases in travel in February this year were by air from continental Europe with 407,700 passengers arriving and 404,600 passengers departing.

There were 94,100 arrivals from Spain and 97,100 departures, 52,300 arrivals and 50,600 departures from France and 40,900 arrivals and 38,000 departures from Germany.

In addition 318,600 passengers arrived from Great Britain and 319,500 passengers departed on the same routes.

Just 38,100 passengers arrived on transatlantic routes and 38,800 passengers departed on these routes.

Visitors from the United States are less than half of what they were in February 2020. There were 35,800 US visitors in February in comparison with 75,800 in February 2020.

Long delays

Numbers travelling to and from Ireland have increased dramatically this month with more than 750,000 people alone travelling through Irish airports around the St Patrick’s extended bank holiday period.

There have been long delays at Dublin Airport recently with many passengers complaining that they missed their flights over the weekend.

Dublin Airport has advised passengers travelling on short haul flights to leave two hours for departure. If going long haul, the advice is three hours prior.

The airport apologised to passengers impacted by long delays but said queues for security are likely to be experienced at peak hours over the days and weeks ahead.

“Like other airports all over Europe, we are currently working extremely hard to ramp up our operation at Dublin Airport after the collapse of international travel over the past two years, including the hiring and training of staff,” a spokesman said.

“The recruitment, training and background security checks for all staff working at an international airport takes a number of weeks. This is happening against a backdrop of growing passenger numbers at Dublin Airport. This is having an impact on the length of time it is taking passengers to get through security, particularly at busy times.”

There were no additional reports of long delays at airport security on Monday morning and currently passengers can get through security in 20 minutes.