Airport passengers up almost 22%

Malta International Airport said passenger movements increased by 21.9 per cent in March when compared to the same month in 2007.

Last month, MIA also handled an additional 207 aircraft movements.

The total passenger movements on scheduled and non-scheduled flights were of 226,540, an increase of 40,743 when compared to March 2007, while aircraft movements increased from 1,778 to 1,983.

Cargo and mail volumes handled were of 1,509 tonnes, a decrease of 67 tonnes when compared to March 2007, but this business sector still remained strong since an average increase of more than 13 per cent was registered in the first quarter of the year.

MIA said passenger traffic from the UK market remained stable with an increase of 2.3 per cent. However, there were significant increases of 42.8 per cent and 34 per cent on the German and Italian markets respectively. The Spanish market continued to grow at a steady pace, from a mere 278 passenger movements in March 2007 to 9,657 in March this year, MIA said.

MIA partly attributed the increases registered last month to additional traffic created by the election week and Easter vacations, since this year the latter occurred a month earlier than the last.

Between January and March this year, MIA registered an increase of 94,598 passenger movements (+21.3 per cent) and an increase of 604 aircraft movements (+13.1 per cent) on its scheduled and non-scheduled traffic compared to the same quarter last year.

The seat capacity rose by 16.2 per cent whereas the average seat load factor also saw an improvement of nearly three per cent.

Cargo and mail activity registered an incremented total of 4,533 tonnes showing a significant 13.5 per cent increase.

MIA said passenger movements from the main three markets - the UK, Italy and Germany - increased by 3.4 per cent, 27.5 per cent and 43.9 per cent respectively in the first three months of 2008.

The busiest day was March 25 with 10,427 passengers and 80 aircraft handled at MIA.