Malta Int'l airport predicts 4.4m passengers for this year

Malta International Airport (MIA) expects to welcome some 4.4 million passengers this year, a 2 percent growth over last year which was a record year for the only airport in Maltese islands.

The growth is believed to be the result of further capacity being deployed to Malta from operating airlines and also due to introducing four new airlines which have already been announced, including Aegean, Finnair, Jet2.com and Swiss.

MIA received 4,290,304 million passengers in 2014, an increase of 6.4 per cent from 2013 which had seen just over 4 million passengers by the end of the year. There was also an increase in aircraft movements by 4.8 per cent, resulting in an equal increase in seat capacity.

Besides an increase in available flights and seats to and from Malta, the airlines flying through the airport also succeeded in increasing the seat load factor, meaning that aircraft were on average fuller than in 2013, from 78.5 per cent to 79.7 per cent. Meanwhile, cargo and mail dropped by 3.1 per cent, from 16,038 tonnes to 15,547 tonnes.

The airport saw unprecedented passenger numbers from its four major markets last year, with significant growth registered for the UK (6.1 per cent), Italy (12.1 per cent), Germany (3.2 per cent) and France (17 per cent).

There was a large drop of 25.8 per cent in traffic from Spain, the fifth largest market, due to weakening demand in Spanish outbound leisure tourism which resulted in a significant seat capacity drop.

"It has been a great year for Malta International Airport and the tourism industry. The record growth every month this year, shows that the island's strategy to attract more traffic in the shoulder months is reaping results", said MIA interim CEO Alan Borg. Enditem