Cork Airport is confident meetings at this year’s Routes Europe in Kraków, Poland will help it to secure new routes for tourism as well as business to support the thriving ITC and Pharma industries in the region. The airport is also confident that this week’s ruling from the US Department of Transportation will permit Norwegian Air International to launch its new transatlantic routes to the United States from Cork Airport.

The southern Ireland regional facility now has a network of more than 50 routes with nine new routes taking off this year including Düsseldorf with Aer Lingus, London City, Nantes and La Rochelle with CityJet, Madrid with Iberia Express, Cardiff with Flybe, Southampton and Leeds Bradford with Aer Lingus Regional as well as Menorca with Lee Travel and Stein Travel.

Since January there has been a 10.5 percent increase in passenger numbers at Cork Airport. It is expected that overall passenger numbers will rise from 2.07 million in 2015 to 2.24 million in 2016, an increase of eight percent.

Cork is one of a number of airports that have secured new routes thanks to their attendance of Routes events. “We ultimately secured the Düsseldorf route with Aer Lingus through discussions that started at the conference last year. We are hoping to emulate that success this year and build on it,” said Niall MacCarthy, managing director, Cork Airport.

“Promoting the region and Cork as the gateway to the South of Ireland is at the heart of what we do. We have a really busy few days ahead at Routes Europe, which is a great event to do business at,” he added.

MacCarthy is being accompanied by Anita Gackowska, head of aviation marketing and Mathias Richter, aviation marketing specialist at the event. The airport team will spend time meeting with airlines and airports as part of their ongoing relationship building and data sharing strategy.

“Cork Airport has cemented its position as the busiest and best connected international airport in the country after Dublin, serving over two million passengers each year. We’re continuously working to build on this, introducing new routes and serving even more passengers,” he said.