Air passenger movements went up by 3.4 per cent in July when compared with the same month last year, reaching 415,780 passengers, the Malta International Airport said.

The increase follows that posted in the first half of the year, which saw a growth of 12.7 per cent in passenger movements when compared to the same period last year.

MIA said aircraft movements and seat capacity slipped by 7.5 per cent and 5.1 per cent respectively in July when compared to the same month last year. However, the average seat load factor rose by 6.9 percentage points to reach 84 per cent from the 77.1 per cent registered in July 2010.

The maximum take-off weight also dropped, by 5.9 per cent on that registered in July last year, while cargo and mail was 10.3 per cent lower than that recorded in the same month in 2010.

Notwithstanding the overall increase in passengers in July, all the core markets, with the exception of Germany and the UK, registered decreases, with Italy, Spain and France falling by 14 per cent, 7.7 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively.

The largest market, the UK, grew by 3.8 per cent while the German market increased by 34.5 per cent, equivalent to 15,037 more passenger movements.

Passenger movements in the first seven months of the year, thus, increased by 10.6 per cent when compared to the same period last year, totalling 1.97 million movements. This increase was mostly due to higher capacity in the first four months of the year when compared to the same period last year, MIA said.