After four months of continuous increase in passenger and tourist movements, there was an as-yet unannounced drop in passenger movements in April, the MIA data, revealed last week, show.

Arriving passengers dropped by 2.6 per cent or some 3,000 people, while departing passengers increased by 0.9 per cent.

At 120,000, arrivals were still some 20,000 below the April 2000 figures.

There were drops of some 1,500 passenger movements to and from Sicily and a further 1,400 drop from and to The Netherlands.

There were drops of 22.3 per cent of passenger traffic from Orly, Paris; 22.9 per cent from Manchester, 19.3 per cent from Brussels, 15.7 per cent from Munich, and 12.2 per cent from Gatwick, only partly compensated by the 9,000 plus passengers brought over by Ryanair from Luton.

Some of these last figures may be explained by the 23.9 per cent drop in flights to Manchester and the 13.4 per cent drop in flights to Paris Orly.