Malta International Airport plc - January Traffic Results

On 4 February, Malta International Airport plc published the January 2015 traffic results. Following the record passenger numbers during 2014, the airport operator kicked off 2015 with continued growth as passenger numbers during January grew by 4.8% to a new record of 208,903 passengers. The increased passenger traffic was due to a 1% increase in seat capacity combined with a 2.5 percentage point increase in the seat load factor to 69.2% which offset the lower aircraft movements.

The airport operator also stated that double-digit growth was registered by the French (+15.8%) and Italian (+13.2%) markets. Furthermore, the UK market registered a 1.5% increase whilst passenger numbers from Germany dropped by 5.6% due to decreased capacity. Meanwhile, traffic to and from Turkey marked the highest growth rate during the month, with a substantial 89.5% increase compared to the same period last year to reach 6,745 passenger movements.

MIA’s ad interim CEO Alan Borg commented that MIA takes a lot of pride in helping to boost traffic to the island, particularly in the slower winter months, so these figures are very encouraging. Mr Borg also stated that besides boosting passenger traffic, MIA is also focused on maintaining an excellent passenger experience at the airport. In this respect, the airport operator is constantly making significant upgrades in the terminal, such as the recent €2 million investment related to the expansion of the non-Schengen arrivals area.

MIA is forecasting a 2% increase in passenger numbers for 2015 to yet another record of circa 4.37 million passenger movements on the back of further capacity being deployed to Malta as well as a number of new airlines and routes, including Aegean, Finnair, Jet2.com and Swiss.