After a "rollercoaster" first year of operations, Emerald Airlines has quickly expanded and is the carrier with the biggest operations out of Belfast City Airport.
Founder and executive chairman Conor McCarthy said the Dublin-based airline, which operates regional flights for Ireland's flag carrier Aer Lingus, added routes out Belfast after the demise of Flybe in early 2023.
Around two weeks before the rival carrier's collapse, Emerald celebrated its millionth passenger, a landmark arrived at within a year of its first commercial flight in February 2022.
The intervening months have seen Emerald frequently in the news as it added routes linking Ireland, Britain and northern France.
Among the recent announcements was one of a new link between Dublin and Brest, but that was quickly followed by yet another from Belfast, which is getting an Emerald Airlines flight to Newquay on the south-west tip of Britain.
And some of the flights are being crewed by ex-Flybe pilots and flight attendants, who quickly slotted in at Emerald's Belfast hub after securing new jobs.
However the blizzard of route announcements has likely come to an end, for now, according to McCarthy, after the inevitable first-year setting-up of operations.
"We’ve pretty much put our plans in place and unlikely were going to add anything new this side of September," said McCarthy, who has just handed the chief executive reins to Keith Butler after the latter's appointment was announced in January.
That is unlikely to mean a less hectic schedule for the carrier, however, with McCarthy expecting travel demand to climb again after the massive post-pandemic rebound seen in 2022.
But this time, carriers and airports are likely to face a less-forgiving public than during 2022, when short-staffed airports struggled to cope with resurgent numbers after two years of little or no travel.
"We think the travelling public gave us a pass last year, they released the airlines and airports were shut down for two or three years, that they lost phenomenal amounts of money," he said, warning that "they won't be as patient again this year".
But to hedge against any airport-related delays or discomforts, Emerald has set up an in-house handling and catering business in Dublin.
Day travel across the Irish Sea is a big part of Emerald's business, but remains a segment that has not recovered to the extent it could have, according to McCarthy, in part due to delays and queues seen at airports such as Dublin in 2022.
"If you’re going to travel to say Bristol for a meeting, you're not going to queue for three hours to fly for one hour, and then do the same in the evening on the way back," he said, explaining the move.