Malta International Airport hosted over 1.8 million passengers during winter, which extends from November to March for the aviation industry. This translates into an upturn of 17.0 per cent over the previous comparable stretch.

Summer remains high season for traffic through the terminal, but the airport has been experiencing increasingly busy winters mainly resulting from collaborative efforts to promote Malta as a year-round destination.

A monthly passenger profile exercise carried out among inbound, non-business travellers reveals that for the stretch between November and February, culture and weather were the top two reasons that attracted tourists to Malta. An encouraging 97 per cent went on to add that the island lived up to their expectations. 

Growth in passenger movements was registered in parallel with an increase of 16.6 per cent in aircraft movements and an increase of 18.1 per cent in seat capacity; both stemming from an enhanced winter flight schedule offering five new routes and increased frequencies on existing ones. On the other hand, seat load factor (SLF) for the season dropped marginally and stood at 77.2 per cent.

Malta International Airport’s top markets were the United Kingdom (+11.6 per cent), Italy (+12.9 per cent), Germany (+14.7 per cent), France (+20.9 per cent), and Belgium (-3.7 per cent), cumulatively accounting for over 1.3 million passenger movements of the airport’s total traffic for winter.

While all winter months experienced double-digit growth, at 22.5 per cent the strongest increase was registered in March. The Easter holidays and the launch of a summer schedule offering more than 100 destinations were important contributing factors to the significantly improved performance observed last month.

With summer now having started, Malta International Airport has inaugurated 12 new routes operated by different airlines for the season, and will be launching more routes in April. Busier days are expected, but with eight additional check-in desks and a new Central Security Area in operation as part of the company’s Terminal Reconfiguration Project, the airport is in a better position to handle the increase in traffic.