Emerald Airways says same-day UK-Ireland travel will not return to pre-pandemic levels

Same-day air travel between Ireland and the UK will not recover to pre-pandemic levels because many businesses have replaced internal face-to-face meetings with conferencing technology. That is the view of Conor McCarthy, executive chairman of Aer Lingus regional franchise Emerald Airlines, who says same day travel between the neighbours – which is almost exclusively for business – remains 40% lower than in 2019. “Those are high-spending passengers, the ones an airline wants,” he said during a talk at an Aviation Club UK dinner in Dublin on 12 January. “It’s an improvement on where it was, at minus 80 [%], and it might go back to 20, but that’s probably going to be it.” He says that while the leisure market has rebounded since the pandemic, and companies have largely returned to in-person customer visits and attending conventions, meetings with colleagues in other offices have in many cases been swapped for catch-ups using Teams and other virtual platforms. Dublin, like London, is a hub for the financial services sector, and many global IT firms have subsidiaries in the republic.<br/>