Malta International Airport plc - August Traffic Results

On 7 September, Malta International Airport plc published the August 2017 traffic results revealing a 14.8% increase in passenger movements compared to August 2016 to a new monthly record of 693,537 movements. The growth registered in August 2017 was due to the 12.9% increase in aircraft movements to 4,624 take-offs and landings which led to a 15.0% increase in seat capacity. On the other hand, the seat load factor during the month of August dropped by 0.7 percentage points to 88.1% which the company still remarked as being healthy and also ranks as the highest seat load factor so far this year.

The announcement further noted that the UK, Italy, Germany, France and Spain registered varying levels of growth ranging from 8.9% to 31.5%. The most notable increase was in the French market (+31.5%) on the back of the launch of the Bordeaux and Toulouse routes as well as the increased capacity on the Lyon route. The German market followed with a 22.6% increase reflecting added flight frequencies on the Frankfurt and Munich routes.

January – August 2017

During the first eight months of 2017, a total of 4 million passenger movements were registered representing a 19.2% increase over the previous corresponding period and equating the total number of passenger movements registered during the whole of 2013.

Recently, the airport operator updated its 2017 passenger growth forecast to 5.8 million passenger movements (representing a growth of between 14% and 16%).