A detailed examination of Malta International Airport’s statistics for the month of December show almost conclusively that low cost airline Ryanair was almost single-handedly responsible for the 12 per cent increase in passenger figures in December as compared to last year.

One also has to add the number of passengers Ryanair is bringing from Pisa but this is difficult to extrapolate from the figures for Italy.

There was a 13.5 per cent increase in departing passengers in December and an 11.7 per cent increase in arrivals.

While passengers from the UK increased by 19.7 per cent, passengers from Germany increased by 25.3 per cent, and those from Italy by 19.9 per cent.

In real figures, the number of passengers arriving in December increased from 65,000 to 73,000, that is by 8,000, passengers from Britain increased by 10,000, from Germany by 4,000 and from Italy by a further 4,000.

But passenger movements to or from Luton, where Ryanair flies from, totalled 8,000, arriving and leaving on 56 flights.

There is also one other fact that was not remarked on: the 73,695 incoming passengers are just very slightly way off from the 2000 record of 73,880 incoming passengers, while the 69,101 departures are an all-time record for December.