Even though October typically marks the end of summer for the tourism industry, this year it still brought over 770,000 passengers through Malta’s Airport.

At a total of 771,253 passengers, this represents an increase of 9.6% over 2019 figures – in other words, pre-pandemic numbers.

In parallel, seat capacity saw an increase of 6.4%. Despite this increase in the seats available on flights, strong travel demand throughout October led to a monthly seat load factor of 84.7%, showing that the industry has well recovered following the pandemic.

October’s top markets for Malta’s airport were Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Spain.

While Italy (+47%), France (+53%) and Spain (+3%) outperformed their respective 2019 results, the United Kingdom’s (-17%) and Germany’s (-23%) slow recoveries continued into October.

The strong results registered between January and October together with the positive outlook for November and December gave Malta International Airport the confidence to revise its traffic forecast, the MIA said in a statement.

The airport is now expecting to have welcomed a total of 7.8 million passengers by the end of 2023.

What do you make of these figures?