Kenny Jacobs, CEO of Dublin airport operators DAA says that a prospective direct service from Dublin to Sao Paolo was prevented from startup by the passenger cap at Dublin.
Kenny Jacobs said We did have a conversation with LATAM about Sao Paolo —I did myself—but they are saying, okay, well, why would we start it? They were going to move one of the Heathrow-São Paulo frequencies to Dublin, but they’re like, well, what happens if we start it in the winter but we can’t keep it in the summer? So why would we bother?
US startup Breeze, EasyJet, the returning Ethiopian, Jet2, Royal Jordanian and Wizz were also amongst the airlines who have been unable to return to Dublin because of the cap, and others have put expansion plans on hold. The legacy 32m passenger cap imposed on the airport because of traffic concerns on the M50 motorway back in 2006.
Without the planning g restriction from Bórd Pleanála Mr Jacobs estimates Dublin would reach 37m passengers in 2024 In a series of high profile interviews this week he said Dublin airport would breach its 32m passenger cap in 2024. He told Travel Extra’s Eoghan Corry:
We’re just flagging where we’re at. I don’t know what happens next in terms of consequence; that’s a question that people have been asking. I’m very comfortable that we’ve done everything to comply, and even though it goes against our grain, we’ve actively discouraged airlines from expanding at Dublin. We’ve discouraged new airlines from coming here. We’ve taken away incentives and introduced new incentives at Cork. If we didn’t take those actions, instead of going over the limit by 1m, we’d be going over by closer to 2m. So I’m comfortable that we’ve done everything we can.
We’re now in uncharted territory because we’re going over the limit. We can’t control the number of passengers because we don’t run the slot process, and you’ve got DEA saying, “Well, we’ve taken all these actions. What more can we do?” So it’s now in a place that’s well above my pay grade in terms of deciding what happens next and what the consequences will be.
There is an opportunity cost. If we didn’t have a cap at Dublin Airport, we know that there’s airline demand out there for 37m passengers next year. If we didn’t have a cap at Dublin Airport, we know operationally we can handle 14m passengers to a very good standard and get them through security in less than 20 minutes. So we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. We have to do everything we can to comply, and we’re comfortable we’ve done a lot to comply. But the quicker we can get on with growth, the better.
This issue now goes beyond transportation and goes beyond aviation. This is not an Ireland problem. Planning moves too slowly; infrastructure thinking is not joined up. Things like the cap are a really good example of something that was designed 16 years ago when you had traffic congestion. Dublin had 15pc of passengers coming via bus; now you’ve got 35pc of passengers coming via bus. We don’t have traffic congestion. The cap is out of date. The sooner it goes, the better. We should have applied for planning years ago, not last year. We learn from that, but we’re in uncharted territory and the great loss is that it’s just going to take… as it now stands.
