Ben Lowry: As Dublin Airport soars, Northern Ireland keeps its shambles of an all-things-to-all-men air transport policy

​Every year we run pictures of it, and one such picture is on this page.

I remember these sorts of pictures in the late 1970s. Even when Northern Ireland was a supposed war zone, expats from here loved to come back. They have always done.

I was thinking about airports recently, and wrote some of my initial thoughts about our air transport provision in October, when I flew out of Dublin Airport to the west coast of America, and how I think Dublin is now by far the best way to get to the US from NI.

Within the last fortnight I have been thinking about it again, having flown to London via Belfast International the week before last.

I have flown in and out of that airport countless times, but often in the very early morning, so only recently did I become aware of delays at rush hour at a traffic light in Templepatrick, and then at the roundabout nearest to Aldergrove.

Getting to the airport took me 10 minutes longer than it normally does. I was in reasonable time for my flight but began to get concerned that there might be some of the very long queues at security that were reported as recently as last month. Happily for me, there was barely any queue that morning (Thursday December 12) and the new security system they have in place seemed to be working well.

But overall our airport policy in NI has been a shambles in comparison to the Republic of Ireland.

South of the border, Dublin Airport is a now a major international hub. The Republic made some simple infrastructure decisions that have reaped dividends.

First, the Irish capital has only one airport, despite being about twice the size of Northern Ireland capital, Belfast, which has two.

Second, Dublin Airport is just north of the city so people coming from NI do not have to cross the city to get to it. For those coming from the south and west of Dublin, there is a the M50 motorway which then links to another M1 motorway that goes almost to the airport door.

Thus, someone travelling from Belfast has a motorway to the door, and an array of bus services, key reasons why I always now travel to America via Dublin rather than via London.

There are superb 24-hour private bus operators from Belfast to Dublin, whose tickets can be bought on a smartphone, and whose comfortable coaches travel down the motorway briskly. Then there is pre-clearance at Dublin Airport for US flights (your passport is checked before you leave, not when you arrive in the US, which can take an hour).

Above all there is now a large number of direct flights to the US. When I was working as a student in California in the early 1990s there were no direct flights from Dublin and no prospect of them. Now there are daily – yes daily – flights to both Los Angeles and San Francisco, including in the non holiday season.

This is all partly because Dublin Airport is large enough now to have a critical mass – enough customers to generate other flights and connections and thus business.

NI we have no prospect of such. We have three airports, including a City of Derry airport that has derisory passenger numbers yet has just been given further Stormont grants to keep it afloat.

It has been clear to me for years that if NI had a chance of being even a minor rival to Dublin it would need to have a single airport, located where the International Airport is now, at Aldergrove. It is near to the centre of NI, and could have been a hub to rival Dublin.

It would need not only motorway connections (bypassing the aforementioned lights and roundabouts) from the north, south, east and west, it would need (and have the passenger numbers to justify) a rail link. Not only that, there would need to be a seamless motorway or dual carriageway link to Letterkenny, maximising the appeal of an NI hub airport to all of Ulster.

But for such a scheme to happen, we would need political unity. No chance. Our politicians prefer all-things-to-all-men, and three airports, kept alive in one case by perpetual subsidy.

I imagine that if there were ever attempts to have a single, major airport it would be defeated in the courts on some ‘equality impact’ grounds.

Last year Belfast International had six million passenger, the City Airport two million and City of Derry 150,000. Meanwhile, Dublin is so busy it wants to raise its cap to take 40 million a year.

As it happens I love using Belfast City Airport. But if I think of what is best for NI, not just for me, I think that a single NI hub could easily attract 10+ million a year passengers, winning back at least a million movements from a Dublin that is at capacity.

But such a scenario is not even being discussed here.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor