Dublin International Airport - Dublin, Ireland
N 53° 25.671 W 006° 14.634
29U E 683108 N 5923405
International airport for the national capital city of Ireland, Dublin.
Waymark Code: WMWTJ
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Date Posted: 10/30/2006
Views: 242
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Dublin Airport (IATA: DUB, ICAO: EIDW) is operated by Dublin Airport Authority plc and is the busiest airport in Ireland. The airport is nearly four times as busy as the second busiest airport on the island of Ireland, Belfast International Airport in Northern Ireland.
The airport is located approximately 10 kilometres north of Dublin City. The airport is the headquarters of Ireland's flag carrier Aer Lingus, and Europe's largest no-frills airline Ryanair.
There is a small tourist information office in the arrivals hall of the airport to the left as you pass the customs control. Here you can buy bus tickets.
With no rail link, the main transport options to the city are taxi or buses. A taxi ride to Dublin city centre will cost from €18-€40 depending on the time of day, traffic, etc. There are several express and local bus routes from the airport.
Dublin Bus operate 2 express routes (747 & 748) to Busáras, the long-distance bus station, with a combined frequency of every 10 minutes. Both routes charge €5.00 one-way. This is your best low cost option to reach the city center from the airport. Travel time is about 25 minutes in light traffic. Allow an hour during rush hour.
If travelling to the O'Connell street districts, the 747 bus will set you down at N53 21.069 W6 15.660 (very near the tourist information office).
Aircoach operate 2 routes to the city centre and out to the southern suburbs; they stop near many hotels on the way. The combined frequency is every 10 minutes and the fare is €7.00 one-way or €12.00 return and children travel free.
Dublin Bus also operate several local services which are considerably cheaper (and slower) than the express buses.
In 1936 the Irish Government established a new civil airline, Aer Lingus, which began operating from the military aerodrome at Baldonnel to the south of Dublin. However, the decision was made that a civil airport should replace Baldonnel as the city's airport. Collinstown, to the north of Dublin, was selected as the location for the new civil aerodrome. Construction of the new airport began in 1937. By the end of 1939 a grass runway, internal roads, car parks and electrical power and lighting were set up. The inaugural flight from Dublin took place on January 19, 1940 to Liverpool. In 1940 work began on a new airport terminal building. The terminal building, opened in 1941, was modeled on the bridge of a luxury liner and was awarded the Triennial Gold Medal of the Royal Hibernian Institute of Architects and is today a listed building. Services were severely curtailed at Dublin Airport due to World War II; however, afterwards three new concrete runways were built and completed by 1947.
Throughout the 1950s Dublin Airport expanded with virtually uninterrupted traffic growth. Runway extensions and terminal enhancements were carried out to deal with the influx of traffic and passengers. In 1958 a new transatlantic service was started by Aer Lingus via Shannon Airport. During the 1960s the number of scheduled carriers continued to grow and aircraft continued to evolve with technological, advancement. By the close of the sixties, a sizeable number of Boeing 737, BAC1-11, Boeing 707, Tridents and Boeing 720s were using Dublin Airport on a regular basis. By 1969 1,737,151 passengers travelled through Dublin Airport.
The advent of wide-bodied aircraft posed opportunities and challenges for aviation. In 1971 Aer Lingus took delivery of two new Boeing 747 aircraft (a third Boeing 747 was delivered later that decade). To cope with this a new passenger terminal capable of handling five million passengers per year was opened in 1972. The growth which was anticipated at the airport (and provided for through heavy investment by the airport and Aer Lingus) during the 1970s did not materialise. This was due to the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, and two energy crises which sparked off a major worldwide economic recession.
In 1989 a new 8,650-foot runway and a state-of-the-art air traffic control centre were opened.
Dublin Airport continued to expand rapidly in the 1990s. Pier A, which had been the first extension to the old terminal building, was significantly extended. A new Pier C, complete with air bridges, was built and as soon as this was completed, work commenced to extend it to double its capacity. The ground floor of the original terminal building, which is today a listed building, was returned to passenger service after many years to provide additional departure gates.
In 1993 a major milestone for the airport was the signing of a new United States-Republic of Ireland bilateral agreement which allowed airlines to operate some direct transatlantic services for the first time to/from Dublin Airport instead of touching down en route at Shannon Airport on the west coast of Ireland (Shannon had once been a major transatlantic refuelling stop for pre-jet aircraft, and this agreement was designed to protect the interests of the Shannon region when modern jets no longer required a refuelling stop and Shannon saw a fall-off in traffic). Airlines still had to provide an equal number of flights either to or through Shannon as to Dublin. A gradual further watering down of Shannon's so-called 'stopover' status will come into effect in November 2006 when more direct flights to Dublin will be allowed, until the stopover requirement disappears completely in 2008. At that time, airlines will be allowed to fly direct to the US from Dublin without having to match these with any to/from Shannon. It is expected that this will result in a huge increase in services between Dublin and the US.
The business community in Ireland believes that the removal of the 'stopover' is long overdue and has long prevented Dublin, with its perfect location at the western end of Europe, from becoming a major hub between that continent and North America.
With the extraordinary success of the Republic of Ireland's 'Celtic Tiger' economy, Dublin Airport has seen phenomenal growth in the 1990s and 2000s. This demand has been driven by a huge increase in business travel to and from the country, together with an increase in inward tourism, and a surge in demand for foreign holidays and city breaks from the Irish, who are now one of the wealthiest populations in the world. In January 2006, the number of trips abroad taken by the Irish outnumbered the number of inbound trips for the first time since records began; media reports were common towards the end of 2005 of the Irish descending on New York in their droves for Christmas shopping weekends (although London is still the top destination from Dublin). A further source of demand has been for flights to holiday homes and investment properties which have been snapped up by the property-hungry Irish across southern European holiday hotspots, the emerging economies of Eastern Europe, and beyond. And finally, the demand from Ireland's migrant workers, principally those from Eastern Europe, has resulted in a large number of new routes opening to destinations in the EU accession states.
Due to the phenomenal growth experienced at Dublin Airport in recent years, the facility is chronically congested[1]. 'Catch-up' has been a feature of how the authorities have been dealing with the growth in demand. One part or another of the airport has been a building site for the past two decades. Despite massive building works and extensions, it is widely accepted that the existing terminal building and infrastructure are insufficient to deal with the volume of passengers. Both the Irish Government and the Dublin Airport Authority have come under pressure from airlines and passengers alike once-and-for-all to provide a realistic increase in capacity for the future. As a result, a new pier (Pier D) is being added to the original terminal which will add significant additional airside capacity, providing gate lounges to serve 14 aircraft stands. This pier will be operational on 28 October 2007. Terminal 2 is to be built and operational by 2009, as will a new pier (Pier E) to Terminal 2. A third terminal is provided for in the blueprint for the future development of the airport. In the interim, space in the basement of the terminal building will be used to create Check-in Area 14 from late 2006. Concerns remain that the airport's road network will become further congested until the Metro to the airport is up and running (see below) and the new road network is completed in 2011.
Also at the planning stages is a new runway to be built parallel to the existing runway 10/28 (opened in 1989). According to the Dublin Airport Authority the new parallel runway needs to be operational within six to seven years to ensure that the airfield at Dublin Airport continues to operate effectively and airline operations are not subjected to growing delays on arrival and departure. In the meantime, the Authority has invested heavily in extending aprons and creating rapid exit taxiways to derive maximum efficiency from the existing main runway. At peak hours smaller aircraft make use of one of the two older runways.
On August 30, 2006, Dublin Airport Authority revealed its plans for the €395 million Terminal Two at Dublin Airport. The new terminal will be capable of handling 15 million passengers a year (the current terminal will handle 20 million in 2006), thereby allowing the airport to handle 35 million passengers a year. The new terminal is scheduled to be built and operational by 2009.
Type: International
ICAO Airport Code: EIDW
IATA Airport Code: DUB
FAA Identifier: DUB
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