Passenger ferries reap benefit of airport delays and missing luggage

Mar 3 2008

AIRPORT delays are driving more people to take ferry holidays, the shipping industry claimed yesterday.

Nearly 43 million passenger- ferry journeys were taken to and from British ports last year – an increase of 419,000 on the 2006 total.

This was the second successive year that numbers rose and followed falls in the early years of this decade, the Passenger Shipping Association (PSA) reported.

UK to Ireland routes – including those to and from Fishguard, Pembroke and Holyhead – did particularly well, with numbers rising 4.3% last year to 5.5 million journeys.

Traffic to Continental Europe rose 1% to 20.2 million, while domestic-journey numbers were stable at 16.9 million.

There was a 3.8% increase in the number of cars taken on passenger ferries last year, with the number of cars on UK to Ireland routes rising 7.4%.

PSA director Bill Gibbons claimed the figures were the result of air passengers’ frustrations with strike threats, missing luggage and spiralling charges for items such as luggage.