This growth has been backed by international flights which have shown one of the best results of the year with a 19.7% rise, flying 321,000 passengers in September. Low cost traffic continues to greatly contribute to this success, with a growth of 23% this month.
International traffic continued to grow with an increase of 19.7%, and 321,000 passengers. Spain retained its position as the top “sunny” destination, showing a strong increase with 44,000 passengers, 10,000 more than in September 2016: Tenerife (+81%), Seville (+18.5%), Palma de Mallorca (+14.6%), Ibiza (+11.1%) and Malaga (+7.4%). There are some good figures to be noted for Spain’s international hubs also: Madrid (+53.2%) and Barcelona (+36.1%). Italy also showed strong levels of growth: Naples (+49.7%), Olbia (+39.4%), Palermo (+32.3%) and Pisa (+27.9%). Greece was “on a roll” this month, with flights to Athens increasing by 41.7% and Corfu by 29.4%. The British Isles also scored highly: Bristol (+35%), Liverpool (+21%) and Dublin (+12%). In Eastern Europe, we saw good levels of growth for Munich (+31.2%) and Prague (+57.1%) and the new connections to Budapest and Bucharest got off to a good start. The long haul flight to Montreal saw an increase of 8.6% with over 5,000 monthly passengers.
Domestic traffic displayed a 4.4% decrease linked to the 16.6% decline in flights to Paris, although traffic to Paris Charles-de-Gaulle remained positive. Since January, French routes have reached around 2,300,000 passengers in total, with a growth of 3.7% compared to the previous year. There were some very good results for Corsica: Ajaccio (+52.5%), Figari (+14.5%) and Bastia (+5.1%). The two Mediterranean cities, Marseilles and Nice, which can be flown to with Hop! and easyjet, have been doing very well, with a growth of 14.9% and 29.6% respectively.
Low cost flight activity displayed an overall growth of 23.4% and 306,000 passengers. Volotea also showed a nice increase of 27.8%. The company has been celebrating these good results at the beginning of October, and has announced that it will be opening two new destinations in May 2018: Calgliari in Sardinia and Minorca in Greece. Low cost traffic has been boosted by easyjet, which has seen a 12.6% increase i.e. nearly 170,000 passengers, which translates to over half of all low cost traffic.
Also worth noting is the opening of a line between Bordeaux and Dusseldorf on 30th October by Air France.
