Airport Guide
Shannon Airport
Though located in a rather remote part of Western Ireland, Shannon Airport is nevertheless the third-busiest in the Republic of Ireland, sitting behind the much-larger Dublin and Cork. From its days as a transatlantic stopping-off point, Shannon is now a low-cost flights hub and remains one of several emergency landing spots scattered across the globe for the space shuttle due to its long runway.
Shannon Airport was originally built on the marshy land of County Clare in the 1930s so as to accommodate transatlantic air traffic that needed to re-fuel between the US and continental Europe.
However, the airport had to wait until 1945 before the first commercial flight touched down, flying in from New York. The popularity of long-haul travel and the limited range of the aircraft of the time saw Shannon's tarmac become steadily more frantic, while in 1947 its stop-over status allowed it to be made the world's first Duty Free Airport.
The terminal's fortunes reversed in the 1960s and notably with the launch of the Boeing 747 in 1971, though several airlines still used it for long-range services, largely thanks to its unique pre-clearance immigration facility, which to this day allows US passengers to sort out all their documentation mid-air and thereby save time on the ground.
With the turn of the millennium, Shannon's status as a glamorous long-haul terminal was finally brought to an end with the dawn of low-cost flying and the dominance of budget carriers looks set to continue now that Aer Lingus has pulled its services to London Heathrow.
Shannon has also been used by the US military for decades and has now been implicated in CIA-sponsored rendition flights. Military personnel can still occasionally be seen using the air field, though not in the terminal area.
Given that the airport is named after the river and there is no city or town of Shannon, travelling to and from the terminal requires at least a little forward planning.
That said, regular bus services run along the nearby N19 to the towns of Ennis and Galway, while in the summer months dozens of coaches depart from the airport to the south and the phenomenally popular Ring of Kerry.
As with most airports in Ireland, there is currently no train service to Shannon and the government has recently ruled that constructing one would be too costly.
Currently, around 60 per cent of all passengers using Shannon Airport are customers of the low-cost giant Ryanair.
After substantial expansion over recent years, the budget carrier now offers services to more than 20 destinations across Europe, including London's Gatwick, Luton and Stansted airports, Malaga, Manchester, Berlin, Glasgow, Riga and Tenerife.
A distant second in terms of numbers, the Irish national carrier Aer Lingus flies to Dublin as well as Boston, Chicago and New York.
Delta offers flights to Atlanta and New York, while Continental Airlines flies to Newark, US Airways to Philadelphia, Air France's CityJet to Paris and Centralwings to Katowice and Warsaw.
History of Shannon Airport
Shannon Airport was originally built on the marshy land of County Clare in the 1930s so as to accommodate transatlantic air traffic that needed to re-fuel between the US and continental Europe.
However, the airport had to wait until 1945 before the first commercial flight touched down, flying in from New York. The popularity of long-haul travel and the limited range of the aircraft of the time saw Shannon's tarmac become steadily more frantic, while in 1947 its stop-over status allowed it to be made the world's first Duty Free Airport.
The terminal's fortunes reversed in the 1960s and notably with the launch of the Boeing 747 in 1971, though several airlines still used it for long-range services, largely thanks to its unique pre-clearance immigration facility, which to this day allows US passengers to sort out all their documentation mid-air and thereby save time on the ground.
With the turn of the millennium, Shannon's status as a glamorous long-haul terminal was finally brought to an end with the dawn of low-cost flying and the dominance of budget carriers looks set to continue now that Aer Lingus has pulled its services to London Heathrow.
Shannon has also been used by the US military for decades and has now been implicated in CIA-sponsored rendition flights. Military personnel can still occasionally be seen using the air field, though not in the terminal area.
Travelling to Shannon Airport
Given that the airport is named after the river and there is no city or town of Shannon, travelling to and from the terminal requires at least a little forward planning.
That said, regular bus services run along the nearby N19 to the towns of Ennis and Galway, while in the summer months dozens of coaches depart from the airport to the south and the phenomenally popular Ring of Kerry.
As with most airports in Ireland, there is currently no train service to Shannon and the government has recently ruled that constructing one would be too costly.
Airlines Flying from Shannon Airport
Currently, around 60 per cent of all passengers using Shannon Airport are customers of the low-cost giant Ryanair.
After substantial expansion over recent years, the budget carrier now offers services to more than 20 destinations across Europe, including London's Gatwick, Luton and Stansted airports, Malaga, Manchester, Berlin, Glasgow, Riga and Tenerife.
A distant second in terms of numbers, the Irish national carrier Aer Lingus flies to Dublin as well as Boston, Chicago and New York.
Delta offers flights to Atlanta and New York, while Continental Airlines flies to Newark, US Airways to Philadelphia, Air France's CityJet to Paris and Centralwings to Katowice and Warsaw.