Malta International Airport has reviewed its passenger traffic projections from 2.94 million to 2.90 million, CEO Julian Jaeger told a press conference this morning. That means that arrivals at the end of this year are expected to be 6.8 percent lower than last year.

He said the review was made mostly because of worse than expected performance in the charter business.

During the first half of this year, passenger traffic declined from last year by 10.9 percent but was up two percent on 2007. The full year results are expected to be slightly lower than 2007 and significantly lower than last year.

Mr Jaeger said passenger arrivals on Air Malta flights were down nine percent in the first six months of this year compared to last year. Ryanair's were down by three percent.

Arrivals only increased from Libya and Cyprus which are considered as being small markets, but they declined by 17.2 percent from Germany, 10.7 percent from the UK, 7.8 percent from France and 10.7 percent from Italy.

In the first four weeks of July, one of the busiest months, there was a drop of arrivals of 5.6 percent.

"We have left the double digit drop but we still registered a significant decrease. We expect August to be along these lines" Mr Jaeger said.