AN AVERAGE of 110 passengers a day used Donegal Airport in 2011, according to end-of-year figures just published.
Traffic numbers at the airport dropped by 14.3 per cent from 46,825 in 2010 to 40,102 last year.
Marketing manager Pauline Sweeney attributed the drop to the difficult economic climate.
“Tourism in the northwest region has been hardest hit and also less people are making leisure trips to Dublin now than before,” she said.
Currently there are two scheduled services from Donegal Airport, to Dublin and to Glasgow.
Flights on both routes are operated by Loganair, under a franchise agreement with Flybe, using 34-seater Saab 340B aircraft.
In August Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar confirmed that Loganair had been awarded the PSO contract for the operation of the Donegal-Dublin air service, which had previously been operated by Aer Arran.
PSO services between Dublin and Knock, Sligo and Galway ended in July, but the Dublin-Donegal and Dublin-Kerry routes were awarded additional contracts for a three-year period with two return flights each day on both routes. Subsidising the routes will cost the State an average of €7.6 million a year.
“The reduced traffic would have been a factor in the carrier appointment with lesser capacity aircraft, while leaving the number of rotations of two flights per day to and from Dublin to service and develop new markets,” Ms Sweeney added.
Donegal Airport was originally developed with a grass landing strip in the early 1980s to facilitate businesses on the Gweedore Industrial Estate in the west of the county.
Several airlines have operated scheduled services from the airport – with mixed success – over the years. In the past the airport has had flights to London (Luton), Edinburgh, Rotterdam and Birmingham. Carriers have included Aer Lingus, Ryanair, Malinair and Ireland Airways.
Its peak year of operations was 2008 when 65,537 passengers used the airport.
The airport is also used occasionally by the Coast Guard and also for helicopter flights serving off-shore oil and gas exploration projects.
Meanwhile, the airport has seen investment of more than €2.5 million over the past 18 months on the replacement of a full Instrument Landing System and the reconfiguration of the runway along with safety works.
According to Ireland West MEP Pat “the Cope” Gallagher, Donegal Airport could not continue commercially without PSO funding. “The PSO is vitally important due to the isolated location of west Donegal, which is without a national primary road or rail link,” he said.
