Shannon Airport

SNN originated in the 1930s with a flying boat terminal (as flying boats had dominated transatlantic air traffic at the time) on the south side of the Shannon Estuary. It was foreseen that the future would require an airport and runway, and in 1936 the Government of Ireland announced that it would use a 1.2-mile site at Rineanna for a transatlantic airport, the country’s first. The first commercial flight to use the new airfield took place in July 1939 via a SABENA Savoia-Marchetti S.73 from Brussels (via Croydon Airport). By 1942 the airport was complete, named Shannon Airport. BOAC provided initial service to Bristol on February 21st, 1942; in August, Aer Lingus began service to Dublin. In 1945 (following the end of WWII), the runways were extended for the benefit of transatlantic flights, with the first Air Services Agreement with the US only permitting US airlines to serve Shannon and only permitting Irish Airlines to serve Boston, New York, and Chicago. The first transatlantic proving flight landed at SNN on September 16th, 1945, via a Pan Am DC-4 from Gander. On October 24th, the first transatlantic commercial flight using a land plane (an American Overseas Airlines DC-4) stopped at SNN on the New York-Gander-Shannon-London route. On February 5th, 1946, TWA began a New York-Gander-Shannon-Paris route. In 1947, the world’s first duty-free airport was established at SNN following the “Customs Free Airport Act,” which became a model for other airports worldwide. Operations at SNN were assumed by Aer Rianta (now Dublin Airport Authority) in 1969, with the airport servicing 460,000 passengers that year. That, coupled with the introduction of the Boeing 747, brought about the need for a new passenger terminal. The first 747 commercial flight took place in April 1971, with the new terminal opening the following month. In September 1975, Aeroflot began service to Shannon (as a stopover en route to other Communist countries, such as Cuba and Angola). The airline kept its fuel storage at SNN, allowing it to sell the fuel to other airlines. In 1983 Aeroflot was temporarily banned from Shannon following US demands for the suspension following the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. The airline eventually returned and, by the mid-1990s (following the fall of the USSR), established a hub at SNN, with flights to New York, Chicago, Washington, Miami, and Havana via Ilyushin II-62 aircraft. In 1986, Shannon introduced United States border preinspection, allowing departing passengers to go through US immigration procedures at SNN (in 2010, the service was extended to private aircraft, making SNN the world’s first airport offering this service for private aviation). The initial Air Services Agreement was changed in 1990, allowing Irish airlines to serve Los Angeles and other US cities while allowing US airlines to serve Dublin via Shannon. In 1993 the agreement was again amended to allow for direct service to Dublin (with the condition that 50% of transatlantic flights had to originate or stopover in Shannon). Although SNN originally struggled following these changes, a 1996 Continental Airlines route between Dublin, Shannon, and Newark, New Jersey, allowed the airport to begin to rebound, and by the late 1990s, the success of the Irish economy, the improving situation of Northern Ireland, and an influx of American tourists caused the airport to rebound. As such, by the end of the decade, SNN was serving roughly 2.2 million annual passengers, and a new terminal extension was opened in 2000 at the cost of 40 million pounds. The agreement with the US was further watered down, with a 2005 agreement establishing that between 2006 and 2008, restrictions on cargo services would be eliminated. In contrast, the stopover requirement was reduced, and Irish airlines were allowed to serve three more US destinations. It was agreed that at the end of this period, there would be no restrictions on scheduled services between any airport in the US to any airport in the Republic of Ireland. Moreover, in 2007 the EU and the US announced an open skies aviation policy (the EU-US Open Skies Agreement) which abolished the Shannon Stopover entirely from March 30th, 2008 (although the stopover was already going to be abandoned due to the 2005 agreement). In 2007 SNN serviced 3.2 million passengers, in part due to an increase in services by Ryanair. However, the airline disagreed with the Dublin Airport Authority in 2008, which led to the reduction of based aircraft from four to one, and the reduction of routes from 32 to eight. On December 31st, 2012 (at the stroke of midnight), SNN became a publicly owned commercial airport, separating from the Dublin Airport Authority. At the time, SNN announced its target of growing to 2.5 million passengers serviced annually within five years (which did not come to pass, as only 1.74 million passengers were serviced in 2017). There were some routes added after the airport went public, with Ryanair adding a twice-weekly route to Alicante, Spain, for the summer months (announced in March 2013), Aer Lingus announcing in August that they would begin a weekly route to Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain (also during the summer months), and other additions, including eight new Ryanair routes from SNN to continental Europe.

The airport is located adjacent to the Shannon Estuary, between Ennis and Limerick.

• As Ireland has a history of military neutrality and is not a member of NATO, there is a history of the foreign military using the airport for stopovers. This included the Soviet Union until the 1990s and the US during the Iraq War. Moreover, there have been allegations (denied by both the US and Ireland) that the CIA has used SNN for extraordinary rendition flights on 33 occasions (with Amnesty International alleging the number of flights to be as high as 50). 
• On September 30th,1994, SNN was the site of the "circling over Shannon" diplomatic incident involving Boris Yeltsin, then president of Russia. 
• The FBOs at SNN are Signature Flight Support and Universal Aviation.