Ireland’s Knock airport is now booming after the film The Banshees Of Inisherin gave a boost to the country’s western coast. — Achill Tourism/dpa
Many people in Ireland scoffed at the notion of building an airport on a windswept plateau of bogland in the west of the country. The received wisdom was that it would never get off the ground.
But almost 40 years after the first flights roared up the 2.3km runway at Knock airport, or Ireland West Airport, to use the official name, the facility is not only going strong but reporting soaring traffic.
According to a January statement, 2023 was “the busiest year on record”. Knock’s annual passenger number of 818,000 was not only a 13% jump on 2022 but topped the next best of 807,000 in 2019.
The bump comes after the celebrated film The Banshees Of Inisherin, starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan, drew much attention to Ireland’s rugged western islands. Many scenes were filmed on Achill Island, about 90 minutes from the airport by car.
When the airport was opened in the 1980s, Ireland was seeing tens of thousands of people emigrate each year, with County Mayo, where the airport is located, particularly badly hit.
Although Apple had by then set up operations in the city of Cork in the south of the island, Ireland had yet to receive the large-scale foreign investment that saw the likes of Google and Meta operate regional headquarters from capital Dublin – where the airport usually handles around 30 million passengers a year.
The airport site is about 20km from Knock – a village and Catholic pilgrimage site that gets around a million visitors a year and hosted papal visits in 1979 and 2018 – and around a 40-minute drive from Ireland’s scenic Atlantic coast.
The airport was the brainchild of Knock’s parish priest, James Horan, whose idea was for the airport to not only cater to pilgrims and open the west of Ireland to more tourists, but to make it easier for emigrants who left region to get home to see their families.
As a small airport, Knock has long been able to boast about its convenience.
Over the years passengers typically have been able to check in, pass through security and be sat at a departure gate in around five minutes, often with time to grab a coffee or tea on the way.
Galway, where a teenage Ed Sheeran once used to busk, is still a must for fans of casual pub and street music. — ALEXANDRA STAHL/dpa
Travellers keen to get away from the buzz of Dublin and explore the natural moonscape of Connemara, the charming town of Westport or the the more down-to-earth city of Galway are also better served flying straight to Knock.
In 2023, the airport added what its management describe as “a new next-generation cabin baggage screening system”, removing the need for passengers to yank out laptops, phones, and liquids from cabin bags.
Over 600,000 of Knock’s 2023 passengers travelled to or from Britain, with most of the rest mostly bound for sun holiday destinations, or to culture and football hubs such as Barcelona (Spain), Cologne (Germany) or Milan (Italy).
Over 730,000 of the passengers flew with Ryanair, the Irish airline that is Europe’s biggest carrier.
However, 2023 also saw Knock lose its popular connection with London Gatwick Airport, known for its fast train link to central London – usually reached within 10 minutes of landing at the airport – and access to the south of England.
The route was replaced by one to London Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, which has more long-haul onward connections than Gatwick but is less convenient for people travelling to or from the British capital. – dpa
