Malta Airport registers increase of 4.1% in traffic in 2012

Malta International Airport plc is forecasting that passenger numbers for 2013 will be around 1.5% more than the record 3.65 million achieved in 2012, at around 3.7 million.

CEO Markus Klaushofer said an increase of 4.1% over 2011 was registered last year, while the forecast for 2013 was based the flight schedules committed as well as the European economic crisis will continue to impact demand for travel, particularly in Malta's core markets - UK, Italy, Germany, France and Spain.

"2012 was the third consecutive record year, and the fourth out of the last five. We continued with our efforts in keeping Malta attractive for airlines through our updated Incentive Scheme, which includes the waiving of landing fees in the winter for the second consecutive year, the waiving of the night surcharge all year round, free aircraft parking for scheduled passenger flights all year round, as well as further incentives for non-EU traffic," Klaushofer said.

The new routes for 2013 will be the Monarch operation to East Midlands in the UK, airBaltic's weekly flight to Riga in Latvia, Ryanair's announced new destinations: Liverpool (UK), Bergamo (Italy) and Gothenburg (Sweden), as well as the added capacity by Lufthansa on its Frankfurt (Germany) operation.

Aircraft movements at Malta Airport increased slightly by 182 which is 0.6% more when compared to 2011 whilst seat capacity increased by almost 50,000, which is equivalent to 1.1%.

Air Malta had 1,660,545 passenger movements, registering a negligible decrease of 1.1% on figures registered in 2011, and which resulted in a share of 45.5% of total traffic. It is followed by Ryanair with a traffic share of 25.4% equivalent to 925,880 passenger movements meaning an increase of 17.6% and easyJet with a traffic share of 8.8% equivalent to 319,601 passenger movements meaning a decrease of 6.3%.

Malta Airport's main markets for 2012 were the United Kingdom with a share of 30% translating into 1,106,436 passenger movements, +1.9% over 2011. This was followed by Italy with 17% or 619,575 passenger movements, or +0.5% over 2011; and Germany with 15% or 539,119 passenger movements, resulting in an increase of 3.5% over last year. 

Legacy carriers have increased their passenger numbers marginally by 0.8%, with their overall market share registering a decrease of 1.8 percentage points to 57% (62% in 2010, 58.8% in 2011). Low Cost carriers increased their market share by two percentage points to 36.4% (32% in 2010, 34.4% in 2011) with an increase of 10.1% in passenger movements. Charter operations have retained their 7% share from total traffic as in 2011 (6% in 2010) with an increase of 2% in their passenger movements.

"The challenge for 2013 is to sustain the growth achieved thus far, continue with our investment in airline marketing efforts and consolidate these results, especially in the Retail & Property segment which will also see the first full year of operation of SkyParks Business Centre," Klaushofer said.