Same-day air travel between Ireland and the UK will not recover to pre-pandemic levels because many businesses have replaced internal face-to-face meetings with conferencing technology.
That is the view of Conor McCarthy, executive chairman of Aer Lingus regional franchise Emerald Airlines, who says same day travel between the neighbours – which is almost exclusively for business – remains 40% lower than in 2019.
“Those are high-spending passengers, the ones an airline wants,” he said during a talk at an Aviation Club UK dinner in Dublin on 12 January. “It’s an improvement on where it was, at minus 80 [per cent], and it might go back to 20, but that’s probably going to be it.”
He says that while the leisure market has rebounded since the pandemic, and companies have largely returned to in-person customer visits and attending conventions, meetings with colleagues in other offices have in many cases been swapped for catch-ups using Teams and other virtual platforms. Dublin, like London, is a hub for the financial services sector, and many global IT firms have subsidiaries in the republic.
On the positive side, McCarthy believes there is an opportunity for Emerald – and Dublin-based Aer Lingus – to pick up more business from US-bound Britons who want to avoid transferring at a congested London Heathrow. “For a start, you’re heading in the right direction, and you can clear US immigration at Dublin,” he says. “Fares from Dublin also tend to be cheaper too.”
However, that could be hampered by a 32 million annual passenger cap at Dublin airport that McCarthy has previously spoken out against as an outdated tool to mitigate congestion on roads surrounding the airport, several of which have been upgraded since the limit was introduced in 2007. The cap includes transfer passengers.
He says conversations with pro-business politicians likely to be part of Ireland’s incoming coalition government have indicated that they favour scrapping the limit.
Start-up Emerald took over the Irish flag-carrier’s regional routes in 2022 after the collapse of incumbent Stobart Air the previous year. It serves mainly UK provincial cities and the Channel Isles from airports including Dublin, Cork, and Belfast City, the latter under a separate UK-registered entity. It also flies in summer to leisure destinations in Brittany.
McCarthy says the all-ATR 72-600 operator made a profit for the first time in 2024, carrying 2.2 million passengers on 40,000 flights with a roughly 80% load factor. However, he acknowledges that the 3% margin it achieved on a turnover of around €200 million ($206 million) is “thin”.
The airline will increase its 18-strong ATR fleet to 20 aircraft this year.
