Traffic at Malta Airport reaches record high

Passenger traffic at Malta Airport for the first half of 2013 registered an increase of 9.2%, and reached a record 1,726,486 passenger movements.

This increase was primarily due to the increase of 7.6% in seat capacity.

The airport said that one of the most remarkable points in these results is that notwithstanding the increase in seat capacity, the average seat load factor registered a further growth of one percentage point, reaching a record 75.1%.

Between January and June of this year, the number of aircraft movements increased by 5.9%, with the maximum take-off weight (MTOW) increasing by 6.7%, whereas Cargo and Mail decreased by 6.9% over the same period in 2012.

When looking at the top markets, the Italian market registered the highest growth for the first six months of 2013 with an increase of 16.9%.

The French market followed with an increase of 14.6% and the UK market registered a 5.5% increase. The German and Spanish markets registered decreases of 2 % and 8.5% respectively.

In June, passenger movements at Malta Airport kept on sustaining the growth trend registered in previous months and grew by an impressive 9.7% reaching a record 411,851 passengers.

Aircraft movements registered higher levels with an increase of 8.1% and seat capacity grew by 9.2%. The average seat load factor went up by 0.4 percentage points over the same month last year.

In June, there was also an increase of 8% in the MTOW, whereas cargo and mail registered a staggering 22.5% increase.