Malta International Airport this year registered the best ever figures for the first three months of the year, with a total of 655,942 passengers in January, February and March.

This marks an increase of 8.4 per cent over last year, breaking all previous records for the shoulder months. This was mostly due to an increased seat capacity of 7.6 per cent.

The positive results registered in January and February were continued last month with more than 263,363 passengers passing through the airport, an increase of 5.7 per cent from March 2013.

These March figures were due to an added capacity of 5.3 per cent and a consistent seat load factor of 78.1 per cent.

Traffic from the UK dropped by two per cent compared to last year, but large increases were registered in Libya (31.9 per cent), Germany (15.1 per cent), Italy (14.1 per cent) and France (7.7 per cent).

Despite overall seat capacity on UK routes remained relatively unchanged, the seat load factor suffered 2.3 percentage points to reach an average of 84.9 per cent for the month as less passengers where carried when compared to the same period last year.

This was due to the operation of less flights and reduced capacity on some of these routes.

Aircraft movements for March increased by 5.2 per cent, while cargo and mail registered a decline of 1.7 per cent over the previous year.

“The traffic in the first quarter of the year has been very encouraging and we remain optimistic for the coming months. We are confident that the introduction of new routes and airlines together with the commitment of our current partners to grow traffic into Malta, we will retain this positive trend,” CEO Markus Klaushofer said.

He pointed out that the airport recently celebrated inaugural flights of British Airways and NIKI.