January - June: Record traffic at Malta Airport

Passenger traffic at Malta Airport for the period between January and June 2012 stands at a marginally higher level than that recorded last year, with a slight increase of 1.6%, registering a record total of 1.58 million passenger movements for the first half of the year. The loss in traffic registered during the first quarter of the year has been countered by the increase registered in the second quarter of the year.

Aircraft movements for the first half of 2012 were 2.8% lower than the same period in 2011, whilst seat capacity was 3.1% below last year. On the other hand the average seat load factor so far has been 3.5 percentage points above that achieved last year.  In the same period, the maximum take-off weight (MTOW) decreased by 1.2% whereas Cargo and Mail increased significantly by 9.4% over the same period in 2011.

The German market registered the highest growth for the first six months of 2012 with an increase of 11.5%. The French and the UK markets registered a minimal increase of 2.1% and 1.4% respectively whereas both Spain and Italy registered decreases, of 7% and 7.5% respectively.

June 2012

For the month of June, passenger movements at Malta Airport grew by 8.5% reaching 375,204 passengers – which is also a record for this month. Aircraft movements registered an increase of 4.7% and seat capacity grew by 5.3%. The average seat load factor went up by 2.4 percentage points over the same month last year. In June, there was also an increase of 7.2% in the MTOW, whereas cargo and mail registered a staggering 34.9% increase.