Malta International Airport plc - October Traffic Results & Updated Forecast

On 8 November, Malta International Airport plc published the traffic results for October 2012 revealing a 0.6% increase in passenger movements when compared to the same month last year. The total amount of passenger movements totalling 348,711 during October 2012 was the highest number ever registered in this particular month by the company. It was also the seventh consecutive month of record passenger movements for MIA.

The growth in passengers during October was brought about by a 1.2% rise in seat capacity when compared to October 2011 to 435,542 seats. On the other hand, MIA reported a 0.6% decrease in aircraft movements as well as a marginal 0.4 percentage point dip in the seat load factor  to 80.1% when compared to the same period last year.

The statistics also showed that during October 2012, the highest increase in passengers emanated from the Italian and UK markets with growth of over 5.5%. Passengers from France also increased by 2.5% whilst the German and Spanish market reported a decrease in passengers of 26.7% and 7.3% respectively.

January – October 2012

During the ten months to 31 October 2012, passenger traffic grew by 3.7% compared to the same period last year to just below 3.25 million passenger movements, mainly reflecting the 2.4 percentage point increase in the average seat load factor to 79%.  Seat capacity and airline movements were only marginally up during the period under review.

Updated Forecast

At the start of this year, MIA had initially forecasted a 2.8% drop in passenger movements during 2012 on the back of two record breaking years. However, as the flight schedule for the peak months of July and August became clearer, the airport operator revised its forecast in July 2012 to a 1.5% increase in passenger movements. Furthermore, after registering its seventh consecutive month of record passengers, MIA once again announced an upward revision to its 2012 passenger forecast to a growth of circa 3% which will lead to the third consecutive annual passenger record of more than 3.6 million passengers.