Sustained growth in passenger movements at MIA

This was brought about by a record seat capacity for the month, which reached 340,975 seats, i.e. an increase of 18.6% over March 2010.

These figures include the extraordinary influx of traffic, a total of 7,465 pax movements, which can be directly linked to the evacuation from Libya, including departing traffic on unscheduled aircraft movements. Therefore, excluding this traffic which was generated by the evacuation from Libya via Malta, March traffic would have reached around 232,895 passenger movements, that is an increase of around 12.8%. Passenger movements by means of military and private aircraft had no impact on the results, since this traffic is excluded from official figures.
 
The average seat load factor registered a decrease of -1.3 PPD when compared to March 2010, reaching 70.5%, whilst aircraft movements for the month grew by 14.1% over the corresponding period last year to a total of 2,061. Likewise the maximum take-off weight (MTOW) registered an increase of 17.4% over March 2010, whilst cargo and mail was 12.9% lower than that recorded during the same month in 2010, i.e. a total of 1,457 tonnes.
 
The Spanish, French and Italian markets once again grew remarkably in March by 56.3%, 49.4% and 14.4% respectively, whereas the UK market grew by a more modest 3.2% and the German market suffered a decrease of 3.6%.
 
For the first quarter of 2011, passenger movements at Malta International Airport registered an increase of 16.3%, aircraft movements registered an increase of 14.6%, whereas the average Seat Load Factor remained the same. The increase was mostly due to the 16.5% increase in seat capacity over the same first three months of the year. The MTOW registered an increase of 15.3% whereas Cargo and Mail decreased by 4.8% between January and March 2011 over the same period of 2010.