The airport will face an even slower winter than previously predicted, according to projections released yesterday by the Malta International Airport.

Malta is expected to receive 2.90 million passengers throughout this year rather than the 2.94 million as forecast in January, translating into an almost seven per cent drop over last year.

Airport CEO Julian Jaeger said that even though things would be better in the second half of the year when compared to the first half, "it will still be tough".

MIA revised its original predictions after reviewing the actual mid-yearly traffic results, which were worse than ex-pected, especially with regard to the charter business.

With a total of 1.25 million passengers handled in the first six months of this year, passenger traffic dropped by 10.9 per cent compared to the same period last year. However, when compared to 2007, a two per cent increase was noted.

The full year results are expected to be slightly lower than 2007 and significantly lower than last year.

Also being considered is the fact that in the first four weeks of July, the second busiest month of the year, there was a drop in arrivals of 5.6 per cent over last year.

"We have now left the double digit drop zone (10.9 per cent) but we still registered a significant decrease. We expect August to be along these lines," Mr Jaeger said.

He said passenger arrivals on Air Malta flights were down nine per cent in the first six months compared to last year while Ryanair's were down by three per cent. Arrivals declined from all major markets, with only smaller markets such as Libya and Cyprus seeing an increase.

The number of arrivals contracted by17.2 per cent from Germany, 10.7 per cent from the UK, 7.8 per cent from France and 10.7 per cent from Italy. Mr Jaeger said that in terms of new routes there was room to grow but he was more optimistic about next summer than this winter.