Malta International Airport plc - August Traffic Results

On 5 September, Malta International Airport plc published the traffic results for August 2012 revealing a 7.9% increase in passenger movements when compared to the same month last year. The total amount of passenger movements totalling 461,153 during August 2012 was an absolute monthly record by the company, breaking the record of 445,232 movements record in the previous month (July 2012).

The growth in passengers during August was brought about by a 6.6% rise in aircraft movements and a 7.5% rise in seat capacity when compared to August 2011 to a new all-time record of 536,632 seats. MIA reported that the seat load factor also marginally grew by 0.2 percentage points when compared to the same period last year to 85.9%.

The statistics also showed that during August 2012, the highest increase in passengers emanated from the German and French markets with growth of more than 14.5%. The other three major markets also registered growth – passengers from Spain rose by 6.2%, Italy (+5.7%) and UK (+0.2%).

January – August 2012

During the first eight months of 2012, passenger traffic grew by 3.7% compared to the same period last year to 2.49 million passenger movements mainly reflecting the record number of passengers recorded during the peak months of July and August.  For the first eight months of this year, aircraft movements dropped marginally when compared to the same period in 2011 while seat capacity was unchanged at around 3.2 million seats. On the contrary, the average seat load factor increased by 2.8 percentage points to 77.9%.

In July, MIA had announced that it expects the positive trend in traffic results experienced during the first six months of the year to continue in the second half of 2012. As a result, MIA revised its passenger forecast for 2012 from the initial 2.8% drop to a 1.5% increase which will lead to a new record of 3.56 million passenger movements – the third consecutive annual record.