2.8% overall growth in February with international traffic up 23.9%

February saw overall growth of 2.8%, driven once again by international traffic with +23.9% and, more specifically, by a 20% increase in low-cost traffic. While domestic traffic fell by 11.2%, growth stands at 16.7% when Paris flights are excluded from the calculation. Several incidents took their toll on traffic last month, with very snowfalls on northern France and elsewhere in Europe, on 6 to 8 February and strikes by Air France staff on 22 and 23 February reducing growth by 2.3%.

Bordeaux Airport’s activity was boosted by international flights which increased by 23.9%, with 181,500 passengers. This growth is due to lots of international links, the main ones:

• Amsterdam (+9.7% and 18,000 passengers)
• London Gatwick (+14.9% and 17,700 passengers)
• Geneva (+16.3% and 15,200 passengers)

But all other international hubs have also performed extremely well, such as Madrid (+62.7%) and Lisbon (+34.5%). Some destinations where capacities have been strongly increased, traffic has more than doubled compared to 2017: Dublin (+140%, Aer Lingus), Brussels (+103%, Brussels Airlines and easyJet) and Prague (+105%, Volotea).

Domestic traffic amounted to 196,100 passengers, an 11.2% fall attributable to a decrease in Paris flights (-24.8%). As far as transversal routes are concerned, growth remained strong for Nice (+24.4%), Strasbourg (+5%) and Marseilles (+4.3%).

Low-cost flights registered 20% growth, with 182,460 passengers transported in February. In terms of volume, the three airlines of the month were easyJet (114,100 passengers, +9.1%), Ryanair (26,300 passengers, +16.9%) and Volotea (16,937 passengers, +76.3%).