Passenger traffic at Malta Airport between January and June grew by 1.6%, registering a record total of 1.58 million movements. Traffic in June alone grew by 8.5% - reinforcing tourism growth statistics (The NSO earlier today reported an increase in tourist arrivals in May).

MIA said in a statement that a dip in traffic registered during the first quarter of the year has been countered by an increase in the second quarter of the year.

Aircraft movements for the first half of 2012 were 2.8% lower than the same period in 2011, whilst seat capacity was 3.1% below last year's.

On the other hand the average seat load factor was 3.5 percentage points above that achieved last year.  

The maximum take-off weight (MTOW) decreased by 1.2% whereas Cargo and Mail increased by 9.4% over the same period in 2011.

The German market registered the highest growth for the first six months of 2012 with an increase of 11.5%. The French and the UK markets registered a minimal increase of 2.1% and 1.4% respectively whereas both Spain and Italy registered decreases, of 7% and 7.5% respectively.

June 2012

During  June, passenger movements at Malta Airport grew by 8.5% reaching 375,204 passengers – which was also a record for this month.

Aircraft movements registered an increase of 4.7% and seat capacity grew by 5.3%. The average seat load factor went up by 2.4 percentage points over the same month last year.

In June, there was also an increase of 7.2% in the MTOW, whereas cargo and mail registered a staggering 34.9% increase.