Why are so many people choosing to fly between Kerry and Dublin?

Clodagh Healy doesn’t feel great about her occasional flights from Kerry to Dublin, she says. Mostly when she thinks about the environment, she says.

In her hometown of Ballyheigue, it still surprises people that she flies to Dublin, says Healy. Until, that is, they hear the price.

“My train ticket to Dublin would be about €33. And for the plane, if you book, not even so much in advance, it would be like €19.99. Which is like a big difference for me,” Healy said.

She used to mostly take the train in her university days, she says, but she recently finished her masters and, without the student discount, the train fares shot up.

Then, there’s the speed of air travel too, she says. “You’re saving time.” Kerry is about as far as you can get in Ireland and it takes a winding four and a half hours to get home by bus, she says.

The train takes about four hours, with changes. The flight takes about half an hour, with a bit added on either end at the airport.

Vahid Ayranpur, a senior postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork who has dug into the carbon footprint brought by Ireland’s aviation, said that he hasn’t thought too much about domestic air travel.

While the absolute numbers of passengers have grown on internal flights, the flights still make up less than 1 percent of flight emissions, he said. The rest is from international routes.

Still the carbon footprint is worth considering, he said, since flying is significantly worse for the world than any other way of travelling.

He would be in favour of measures to discourage it such as higher pricing, he says – but is also in favour of better connections in rural areas via bus or train. “We need to ensure that there are enough infrastructure, you know, for replacing that.”

Cheap and easy

The Dublin to Kerry flight wasn’t always so cheap and easy. Prices dropped and flights have become more frequent since the pandemic.

The route used to be more expensive in the past, when as a public service obligation route it was subsidised by the state and operated by Stobart Air.

But Stobart Air ceased operations in 2021. RyanAir swooped in to take over the domestic flight route, and opted to run it from July 2021 on a fully commercial route so it doesn’t get any state subsidy.

RyanAir promised in a statement to “stimulate increased passenger traffic” with low fares. Passenger numbers have grown manyfold.

In August 2021, 1,200 passengers flew from Dublin to Kerry and 1,400 flew from Kerry to Dublin, according to data from the Central Statistics Office.

In August 2024, 5,700 passengers flew from Dublin to Kerry, and 6,400 flew from Kerry to Dublin, the same dataset shows.

Feljin Jose, the Green Party councillor and spokesperson on transport said this is the wrong direction of travel.

“Sure, it’s a small part of Ireland’s emissions when you look at it on its own but it’s going completely the wrong way and competing directly with trains,” he said.

Making a choice

Healy says she justifies flying by the idea that she is just one passenger. “The plane [would be] going anyways.”

That’s a bit chicken and egg, says Ayranpur, the researcher at University College Cork.

He suggests ways to discourage people from flying domestically. “If we have a kind of travel tax, if we can increase the cost or price of tickets for passengers, that would be a kind of starting point to discourage passengers,” he said.

“Then the airports or the airlines can reduce the number of flights from daily to weekly, for example, or biweekly,” he says.

But Vahid is mostly in favour of improving the alternatives.

Trains are the best choice, he says, as they have low emissions if the infrastructure that they run on is in place – which it is.

Rural areas need better connectivity,  he says, like more train capacity.

Indeed, it is far from just price that has drawn Healy to flying, she says.

When she lived close to Dublin Airport, it was handy to fly, she says. She doesn’t like taking the Red Line Luas to Heuston Station at night either, she said, and the station can be open and cold.

Often when she’s flying from Kerry to Dublin,  she is on her way to visit her partner in Vienna, she says. Flying that first leg means she is already through security – and security at Kerry Airport is really comfortable too.

Kerry Airport is basically just one big room, about the size of a sports hall, she says. A high-tech scanner means people don’t have to take out liquids or electronics, and then you’re through, and there’s just two gates, a bar, and a store, she says.

“The longest line I’ve waited in there was like three people,” said Healy.

In an ideal world, the train would be the cheap option and it would run straight and seamless to Dublin Airport, she says.

But for now, that option doesn’t exist, so she flies, even though it weighs on her, because right at this moment, it seems to make sense.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.