Ready for lift-off as Ireland West Airport prepares for its busiest season yet

As with so much else across the country, work at Ireland West Airport took a back seat to the recent Storm Éowyn clean-up.

But now it’s full steam ahead as the team prepares for a busy season, with the addition of a new route and expansion of some of the more popular existing routes. Managing Director Joe Gilmore talked to journalist Siobhan McNamara about the current situation at the airport, his vision for the future, and how Ireland West Airport is playing a vital role in moving towards meaningful sustainability in the air travel industry.

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New Walkway

One development which is great news for passengers is the construction of a covered walkway at the terminal. 

Joe said: It has been a request for a number of years from people, and the challenge has been that we have been waiting to try and finalise expansion plans for the main parking apron here at the airport. And we have finally done that with the government.

“It’s going to be about a 60m or 70m walkway along the side of the building and it will give shelter for passengers as they queue to board aircraft. It is not going to cover the last 20m or 30m to the actual aircraft steps, but it is going to give passengers cover when they are queuing up; they will have shelter from the weather while they are waiting to board.”

Work on the walkway began before Christmas, but the team had to hit pause on the project following Storm Éowyn as many of the contractors were engaged in emergency repairs in the region.

“We are not putting pressure on them because they are around doing roof repairs everywhere,” said Joe. “We can hold a few weeks and let them do the urgent work.

“But we are hoping to have the walkway in place in the next four to six weeks, so that will be a really good development.”

Increased Capacity

In 2024, Ireland West Airport recorded its busiest year to date. For the first time in the airport’s history, passenger numbers increased by 2% to 834,000, surpassing the previous record of 817,000 passengers achieved in 2023. The airport now serves 22 International destinations and is served by three of Europe’s major international airlines: Aer Lingus, Lauda Europe, and Ryanair.

And early indications are that 2025 could be even busier. Ryanair has shown a major vote of confidence in the facility by increasing frequency and capacity by 15% on UK routes and on holiday destinations such as Alicante, Faro and Malaga.

Joe said: “We would always like to see new routes but we are delighted to get extra capacity on routes that are already proven on the demand that is there, and we expect to see further passenger growth this year. 

“It is too early to say yet how 2025 will look but we are confident that we will hopefully surpass last year’s numbers - but it is early days yet, and subject to all sorts of factors.”

Joe welcomed the addition of a new route, a Dutch tourism service from Groningen, Netherlands. It will be operational from June, and is run by leading Dutch tour operator BBI Travel.

Donegal is important to us

Joe is very appreciative of the support that Ireland West Airport receives from the people of Donegal, and he is proud of the service that is provided at the regional airport.

“I think the fact that when people from Donegal are prepared to travel down the distance, it is a vote of confidence in terms of the ease of use and the convenience, and hopefully the service levels and the value for money that they feel they get as compared to going to the larger congested airports,” he said.

“Obviously we will never be able to offer the same suite of routes of the bigger airports but we are seeing that there are people within the region who, from a leisure point of view, don’t want to travel from larger airports if they can avoid it all - just purely for the convenience, the ease of use, and the fact that they can park very close to the terminal here. Thankfully, 99.5% of flights go as scheduled.”

It is estimated that 33,000 outbound Donegal passengers used Ireland West Airport in 2024, an increase of 10%. And around 10,000 tourism passengers indicated that they were travelling on to stay in Donegal in the same period, with an average stay of six nights. 

With Donegal County Council being one of seven local authority shareholders in the airport, the inbound tourism business and connectivity convenience are major factors.

“When that deal was done seven or eight years ago, Donegal recognised the importance of the airport as well in terms of the connectivity we can provide for both outbound and inbound visitors from overseas visiting Donegal,” said Joe. “It is a very important market for us.”

Joe believes that improvement of the road network is urgent in terms of safety, and it is fundamental to attracting investment. As with Donegal, his own county of Mayo knows the pain of road traffic fatalities.

“There is an enormous amount of traffic on the roads now, and it is very dangerous,” he said. “We have had a lot of fatalities. We need proper infrastructure in place. They are speed limiting and putting cameras and that will have an impact, but in my view, they need to upgrade the roads.”

Joe has clear views on what is needed, and he does not hold back in calling for major infrastructural investment for the west and north west.

“I would be very vocal and I don’t think we should be apologetic about asking for improved infrastructure,” he said. 

“There is a national imbalance that we need to be serious about addressing. In terms of growth, the east coast is phenomenally successful, and we are proud of it, but I think we are missing a significant opportunity here on the west coast by not investing in more infrastructure - better transportation, roads, and in particular, rail as well. 

“I know it is not directly up to Donegal, but why not? Why don’t we have a train line, re-open the line to Sligo and start to go north from there? 

“In terms of roads, we would really like to see the N17 completed and upgraded into a motorway up to Sligo and beyond. North of Sligo you have got challenges from Sligo to Ballyshannon on that section of the road. 

“If you get certainty over transportation, you get certainty for people to invest and to relocate.”

Airport Infrastructure

At the airport, Investing in infrastructure is an ongoing process in terms of maintaining and developing the quality or service. As well as the construction of the walkway, around €7m of capital works were carried out in 2024, with a further €6m planned for the next year, and up €38m by 2028 subject to government support.

“Most of the works we do, passengers probably don’t see it because it’s fire safety, security, air traffic control, and it’s critical maintenance work that has to be continually ongoing here,” said Joe.

“We had the purchase of two new fire engines, electric vehicles around the airport, runway upgrades, electrical infrastructure, so a lot of the work you don’t actually physically see but it is necessary to keep the infrastructure upgraded.

“We are continually spending money to make sure it is safe and operational for passengers.”

Sustainability Goals

While some of the next stage of planned infrastructural development includes works such as the first phase of the passenger apron safety expansion, there will be a big focus on sustainability. 

Environmental impact has previously been the elephant in the room for the travel industry, but Joe and his team are tackling the issue head on. 

“We have the first stage of a solar farm we hope that we can put in place to cover about half the airport’s electricity requirements,” he said. “We have planning in place for that particular prospect at the moment as well. That’s with a drive to making the airport sustainable in terms of zero carbon by about 2050.

“Airports as businesses within the boundary fences, we are in control of most of the carbon emissions apart from obviously the aircraft. 

“And from later this year we will be supplying sustainable aviation fuel to airlines. The acronym is SAF, Sustainable Aviation Fuel, it’s basically a drop-in additive to the existing fuel that reduces the carbon emissions in aircraft. The necessary infrastructure and checks have been put in place for that. So there is a lot happening in the whole sustainability and carbon area.” 

It is something of a contradiction right across the world that while many of us move towards greener lifestyles, we are not prepared to sacrifice foreign travel.

“We all love to get away,” said Joe. “I think what will happen in time is with carbon taxes, it will probably get more expensive to travel, no more than carbon taxes on motor fuel.

“Personally I think the days of short breaks could suffer and people will be taking longer breaks. But I think that is a few years down the road.”

Joe is, however, optimistic that this could be mitigated by innovation in the sector.

“With the advancement of fuel development I am hoping that sustainable aviation fuels will decarbonise air travel over the next 10 years,” he said. 

In the meantime, as the team plays their part in moving towards a more sustainable future for the sector, they are looking forward to welcoming more passengers to this wonderfully scenic regional airport.

“The view coming in here is spectacular - no more than Donegal Airport in fairness,” said Joe. 

“As Monsignor Horan said years ago, on a fine day there is no place better than here because you can see five counties from Benbulben over to Croagh Patrick and Nephin, down to the Twelve Pins. And on a wet day, you just see what you see everywhere - rain!”

The future is certainly looking bright for Ireland West Airport and the growing number of passengers that it continues to serve.