Malta International Airport is expecting to handle 320 million passenger movements this year, or eight per cent over last year and 1.2 per cent more than what was forecast for the year in January.
The projected performance will mean an increase of 19 per cent in passenger movement over 2006 and would also be significantly above the European average, the airport's CEO, Julian Jaeger said yesterday.
Despite the positive results of the first six months, which have shown an increase of 14.5 per cent over the same period last year, Mr Jaeger expressed caution over the "crucial" second half of this year, predicting a "modest" growth of 3.2 per cent, significantly below that achieved until June.
This month September and October were looking "quite good". But winter was not and could prove difficult, Mr Jaeger continued, saying Germanwings would not be operating in the shoulder months, although it would return in summer.
MIA was having talks with several other airlines and interest for next summer had been expressed by low-cost carriers, with potential from Eastern Europe and Germany.
Although it was too early to provide details, he was certain there would be the same capacity in winter as last year and expressed cautious optimism that capacity would be increased again next summer.
Referring to last month, Mr Jaeger said it showed a strong growth of 8.2 per cent in passenger movement.
While aircraft movements were down by 1.4 per cent, seat capacity rose by 3.1 per cent and seat load factor by 3.4 per cent to 72 per cent.
Last month, the main markets, except for Italy, had shown increases: the UK was up by three per cent; there was an "incredible" performance by the French market, up by 44.6 per cent, and movements from Spain were five times those of last year.
Italy was down by 15 per cent last month, probably due to the large numbers who had flown to Rome for the canonisation of St Ġorġ Preca last year, Mr Jaeger explained. Over the six-month period, however, it was up by 10 per cent, while the rest of the main markets had all registered increases. Other markets, including France, Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands and Sweden, also experienced growth, Mr Jaegar said, praising the Malta Tourism Authority's marketing strategies, particularly in the smaller markets, which were showing potential.
Speaking about the traffic results for January to last month, he said passenger movements amounted to 1.4 million. May was a particularly strong month, with a growth of 17 per cent.
MIA's average growth from January to April stood at16 per cent, which was significantly above the European average of 6.2 per cent, he noted.
Mr Jaeger described the business mix of this year as "healthy". The legacy carriers were up by 34,500 passengers but lost 7.5 per cent of the market share.
When considering the share of total traffic among low-cost carriers, 13.6 per cent went to Ryanair, followed by EasyJet at 4.1 per cent and Germanwings at 1.3 per cent.
Mr Jaeger maintained that the overall share of the low-cost carriers would increase in summer and predicted that EasyJet would rise to third position of the top airlines by the end of the year.
In the first six months, two airlines, Air Malta and Ryanair, increased traffic by about 100,000 passengers each. Ryanair doubled its passenger volume due to the addition of new routes and the national carrier increased its load factor, having its best winter ever.
Alitalia, on the other hand, lost 17 per cent of passenger movement and British Airways lost 30 per cent, with passengers shifting to EasyJet.
About 68,000 passengers were lost from other airlines, also because British Jet had pulled out, but the bulk was taken up by Air Malta.
The main destinations were London-Gatwick, with German airports performing very well. In fact, it was likely that Air Malta, which had shown a strong performance on the Frankfurt and Munich routes, would increase its capacity to Germany next year, Mr Jaeger said.
France has also shown "surprising" results, with a 26-per-cent increase from Paris-Orly.