Malta International Airport handled 1.41 million passengers between January and June this year, an increase of 178,462 movements (14.5%) over the same period in 2007.

In the course of a media conference, MIA’s CEO Julian Jaeger analysed the traffic operations during the first half of this year. Aircraft movements increased by 4.3% whilst the seat capacity surpassed the 2 million figure with an increase of nearly 7%. More importantly, the seat load factor increased from 65.2% to nearly 70% during the past six months. Cargo and Mail activity is also on the rise with an increase of 7.1% for a total of 9,244 tonnes handled.

Mr Jaeger said that the airlines’ business mix has changed mostly due to the higher presence of low-cost airlines. “With Ryanair commencing its operation of new routes in 2008 as well as the advent of Easyjet, Vueling, Norwegian and Volareweb, low-cost carriers increased their share of operation by 11.2% and currently command a 20% share of the total traffic to Malta. Legacy airlines have increased the number of passenger movements by 34,500 but have lost close to 7.5% of their market share, decreasing to 71%. Increases are mostly directed at the expense of the charter operations, losing 3.8% of the market share and translating into 30,500 passengers less during the first six months of this year. However, this evolution in the business mix falls in line with international trends” Mr Jaeger said.

Air Malta and Ryanair were the airlines that gained most during the period under review, the former increasing its traffic by over 102,000 passengers whilst the latter registered an increase of 97,000 passengers travelling to and from Malta. Easyjet carried nearly 58,000 passengers during its first months of operations, whilst Lufthansa and Emirates also increased their figures considerably. Alitalia registered a fall of 17% due to the discontinuation of the Milan route, whilst British Airways also decreased its movements by 30%, due to the take-over of the GB Airways’ operations by Easyjet.

Conversely the greater spread of the increase in passengers over the main markets is indeed a positive note. Whilst in 2007 the bulk of the increases were registered in the three main markets - the UK, Germany and Italy - the first six months of 2008 marked increases in other important markets such as Spain (+762%) France (+24%), the Netherlands (17%), Belgium (10%) and Sweden (32%).

“The excellent results of the first half of the year prompt us to increase our forecast for 2008, meaning that we should meet the 3.2 million passenger mark equivalent to a 19% increase over 2006, which is a record for MIA. However, we remain cautiously optimistic on the growth for the latter half of 2008, whereby July and August will be crucial months. Moreover, winter is expected to be difficult given the whole economic outlook with the price of oil increasing by nearly 50% since January, and the GBP losing 15% of its value during the past 12 months when compared to the Euro. Nevertheless, considering all these salient factors and the effects thereof, we now expect an increase of 8% in 2008, whilst our forecast last January had indicated a 6.8% increase for this year” Julian Jaeger said.