Malta airport has best July ever

Malta International Airport registered a record number of passenger movements for July, breaking through the 400,000 mark for the first time.

Passenger movements increas­ed by a substantial 15.8 per cent, or 54,279, over July 2009. Aircraft movements also went up, by 10.8 per cent, as did seating capacity, by 12 per cent.

“This confirms our positive outlook for 2010. These results are indeed attributable to the close cooperation with the Malta Tourism Authority as well as the input of all other stakeholders,” CEO Julian Jaeger said.

Traffic from the Spanish, Italian and French markets all increased significantly, by 41.5, 31 and 17.5 per cent respectively. The UK market, which is the airport’s largest, increased by a modest 5.2 per cent. A very small drop of one per cent was registered for the German market.

During the first seven months of this year, passenger movements went up 11.5 per cent to reach 1,782,757 when compared to the same period last year.

MIA pointed to a 9.2 per cent in plane seating capacity as the main factor behind the increase.