Passengers at Dublin Airport.
Ryanair has unveiled its largest summer schedule at Dublin Airport (DUB), capitalizing on the temporary suspension of the airport’s passenger cap for the summer 2025 season.
The move will see the airline base 34 aircraft at Dublin, including 14 Boeing 737-8-200s. The ULCC also plans to launch one new route to Rabat, Morocco, and increase capacity on 18 existing services to the likes of Faro, Portugal; Ibiza and Valencia, Spain; Malta; and Milan, Italy.
The Irish High Court suspended the cap—set at 32 million passengers annually—in late 2024 following legal challenges from Ryanair and Aer Lingus. The restriction had been imposed by Ireland’s aviation regulator, citing legacy planning conditions tied to the airport’s terminal infrastructure.
The cap had forced airlines to reduce scheduled flights in 2024, despite passenger demand pushing DUB to handle 33.3 million passengers last year, a 4% rise from 2023.
Ryanair has been a vocal critic of the cap, describing it as “artificial” and counterproductive to Ireland’s connectivity and tourism growth. CEO Eddie Wilson welcomed the suspension but cautioned that the long-term situation remains uncertain, pending a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on the legality of the cap.
“While this is great news for Irish passengers in the short term, the long-term problem has not gone away, and while we are confident that the EU Court of Justice will deem the Dublin traffic cap illegal, there is currently no certainty that Dublin will be able to grow beyond summer 2025,” he said.
Wilson called on Ireland’s new Transport Minister Darragh O'Brien to make abolishment of the traffic cap the government’s “number one priority,” which would allow Ryanair to “grow Ireland’s traffic 50% to 30 million passenger per annum by 2030.”
Ryanair’s decision to increase capacity coincides with DUB’s application to raise its passenger cap to 36 million annually without new construction. Daa—the airport authority—filed a “no build” application with Fingal County Council in December 2024, arguing that the current infrastructure is capable of accommodating higher passenger numbers.
DUB also lodged an application in late 2023 to increase capacity to 40 million passengers, a rise that would require works such as extending piers at the airport, with an estimated cost of €2.4 billion ($2.5 billion).
Ryanair ranked as the largest carrier from DUB in 2024, with a 44.4% capacity share of the market. According to OAG Schedules Analyser data, the airline plans to offer more than 6 million departure seats from the airport during the summer 2025 season, up by 4% on summer 2024.
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