A total of 1.7 million passengers across Ireland were affected by some level of flight disruption between July and September, according to data from AirHelp, the world’s largest air passenger rights organisation.
According to the survey, around 33% of air passengers in Ireland were disrupted. Most Irish passengers faced delays of less than 3 hours, meaning they weren’t eligible for financial compensation.
Over 92,00 people had the right to claim and receive financial compensation from their airline. Over 50,000 travellers had their trips cancelled altogether.
During the summer season, Dublin Airport was found to have the highest disruption rate of 35%, affecting over 1.5 million passengers. Kerry County Airport follows this with 32% of passengers disrupted between July and September this year. Meanwhile, the most punctual airport during this period was Donegal Airport with 19% of flights disrupted.
When looking at the most disrupted routes from Irish airports, Dublin Airport to Cairo International Airport ranked the highest with over 77% of flights disrupted during this period. Routes from Shannon Airport take the second and third spot on the ranking – with its route to Edinburgh Airport having a disruption rate of 76%.
On the other hand, the luckiest passengers were those who travelled from Shannon Airport to Boston Logan International, with over 96% of the flights taking place between July and September departing on time. Shannon Airport to Béziers Cap d’Agde Airport (France) and Shannon Airport to Warsaw-Modlin Airport are the other routes with the highest percentage of punctuality at 96% and 95% respectively.
“AirHelp has one of the most reliable and accurate collections of flight data in the world. This allows us to provide holidaymakers and business travellers with an in-depth look at how airlines and airports are performing. With ongoing strikes, Air Traffic Control outages and rising disruption levels, recent months have proved that those based in Ireland have significant opportunities for improvement, to ensure the service they are providing to passengers is as punctual as possible,” said Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of AirHelp.