Malta International Airport said today that it achieved an October record of 348,711 passenger movements last month. It also had the best summer ever.
The increase last month was 0.6% above October last year. Seat capacity in the same month was of 435,542 or 1.2% more than that of October 2011.
The result was welcomed by Tourism Minister Mario de Marco, who noted that Malta has seen monthly tourism records since April.
MIA said that in October, aircraft movements decreased by 0.6% over the corresponding period last year, whilst the average seat load factor decreased marginally by 0.4 PPD, and stood at 80.1%. The maximum take-off weight (MTOW) increased by 0.6% with a total of 219,445 tonnes, whilst cargo and mail was 26.5% less than that recorded during the same month in 2011.
The German market had a significant decrease of 26.7%, whereas the Spanish market registered a decrease of 7.3%. On the other hand, the Italian, UK and French markets registered increases of 5.9%, 5.6% and 2.5% respectively.
January – October 2012
The results for the first 10 months of the year, in terms of passenger movements, show an increase of 3.7% when compared to the same period last year, totalling 3,245,545 passenger movements.
Once again, this positive result was mainly brought about by the increase in the average seat load factor which stands at 2.4 PPD, and this is more noteworthy when one considers that the number of aircraft movements has more or less remained the same with an increase of 0.2% over the same period last year.
Year record expected
With the closing of the Summer Schedule (Apr-Oct), the company said it is now in a position to update its forecast for passenger traffic for 2012 from an increase of 1.5% announced in July 2012 to approximately 3%, which means reaching the record of more than 3.6 million passengers.
CEO Markus Klaushofer referred to the crucial importance of the shoulder months as the area for potential growth; and consequently, Malta Airport’s marketing initiatives as a direct investment in this regard. “For the second year running, this winter schedule we are waiving all landing fees on all scheduled passenger traffic to continue incentivising airlines to keep their operation to and from Malta all year round,” he added.