The Government is expected to review its support for regional air links in the new year which may mean a rationalisation of some routes.
Talks have already taken place between the junior transport Minister, Dr Jim McDaid, and regional airport management representatives, and the Minister for Transport, Mr Seamus Brennan, is due to bring an aide-memoire to Cabinet shortly.
This follows the Minister's receipt of a Davy Kelleher McCarthy consultancy report on the regional or public service obligation (PSO) routes, the State-subsidised air links between Dublin and Kerry, Galway, Donegal, Sligo, Knock and Derry.
Figures for passenger numbers on PSO routes last year (2002) show that Galway and Kerry links were most popular, while the route between Knock and Dublin performed poorly.
Some 97,476 passengers used the Galway-Dublin service, and 82,045 the Dublin-Kerry link, whereas only 10,540 used the Dublin-Knock service in 2002. This increased slightly to just over 14,000 this year.
However, Knock International Airport is not losing any sleep over this, given its increase in traffic on other routes and the fact that it is now to receive a Government Department, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, under the decentralisation plan.
Knock is now the fastest-growing sunbound airport in Ireland, its chief executive, Mr Liam Scollan, said, having recorded a 600 per cent growth in its charter business this year.
In total, the airport has recorded 250,000 passengers over the past year, a 26 per cent increase, and has a turnover of €5.6 million, compared to €4.2 million last year.
A new management structure under the chairmanship of Mr Joe Kennedy, has been largely responsible for this turnaround, to the extent that it is now time to shed the "foggy, boggy" image, according to its new marketing and sales manager, Mr Desmond O'Flynn.
Originally dismissed as south Mayo's "white elephant" when it was initiated by the late Mgr James Horan, the 17-year-old airport now has four scheduled flights a day, and seven weekly charter destinations.
Three of the direct flights serve British airports - London Stansted, Manchester, Birmingham - and last week a fourth link, with Glasgow, was confirmed for March 2004 by BMI Regional, which is a subsidiary of BMI, the second-largest carrier in Britain.
Charter flights serve Lanzarote, Mallorca, Malaga, Alicante and the European shrines of Lourdes, Medjugorje and Fatima. Significantly, Knock shrine itself has not capitalised fully on the airport's presence, and some 900,000 visitors travelling to the west and north-west of Ireland from London and the south-east of England every year still travel via Dublin.
"Yet we have a runway longer than that in Cork, we are in a central location in the Border, Midland and Western region, and it is expected that we are going to exceed our five-year growth objectives for 2002-2007 before that date," Mr Scollan said.
The airport says it is also outpacing Shannon in passenger numbers to Britain, and loyalty to Knock was a strong factor in recent market research undertaken by the airport.
A transatlantic route is the next target for management. "We know from our research that 150,000 people would use Knock to fly to New York, and we feel a moral, as well as commercial, duty to fulfil this demand," Mr Scollan said.
The airport has a 1.2 per cent diversion rate due to fog, which is on a par with other airports. "We do acknowledge that the PSO service didn't take off, and there were problems in the early days with punctuality," Mr Scollan said.
"The PSO service is important for the airport, but we don't depend on it, and we have no interest in sustaining a service that is not commercial," he said.
Dr Jerry Cowley, the Independent TD for Mayo, said Knock Airport was the "one great hope" for survival and growth of the BMW region and called for further State funding to enable it to realise its full potential.
