Clay You can get data up to 2003 from www.aer-rianta.com For 2002, passenger numbers were: Transatlantic 618,000 Britain 702,000 Continental Europe 495,000 Within Ireland 118,000 Transit 420,000 Total 2,354,000 Cargo 48,100 tonnes Shannon has a local-originating traffic base which is fairly small, so it relies largely on tourist traffic originating elsewhere. It gets about half the US-originating traffic on direct services to Ireland. For British and Continental traffic it competes with Cork, and to a much lesser extent, Kerry, Galway and Knock, as well as Dublin. The domestic traffic is mainly Shannon-Dublin on transatlantic flights which operate through, something Aer Lingus has been phasing down. Transit traffic is generally in decline, but it takes a boost whenever charters are busy, sometimes with government flights. There is minimal connecting traffic. There is a fair level of movement of business aircraft en route across the Atlantic and there are maintenance facilities belonging to Air Atlanta and Lufthansa (Shannon Aerospace). The Irish government requires that any transatlantic operator non-stop to/from Dublin must offer at least as many non-stop services at Shannon as at Dublin. This will probably go when there is a US-EU agreement on open skies. It is controversial, because while it helps to maintain activity at Shannon, it is based on forcing a market to do things it may not want to and arguably reduces total American tourism to Ireland. A specific negative is the restriction of gateways for Irish carriers to Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. US airlines can operate from any US point. If you have something specific in mind, I may be able to help you more. Antoin. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Clay Wardlow" <clay.wardlow@xxxxxxxx> To: <AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: 23 June 2004 18:46 Subject: SNN How busy is Shannon now a'days? Does it have a lot of traffic that end and start there, or is the reason it's been so busy before because it was one of the closest European airports to the US? Clay - SEA