Traveller Numbers Approaching Pre-Pandemic Levels As Normalcy Returns To Malta Airport
Travellers passing through the Malta International Airport have increased over the last few months when compared to previous years, even approaching pre-pandemic levels.
Around 603,532 passengers travelled through MIA in June, with passengers from Spain returning to the top five markets visiting Malta following a seven-month absence. Around 2.3 million passengers moved through the airport in the first six months of 2022.
With these figures, Malta’s achieved 84% of its pre-pandemic travel movement levels.
“Traffic through Malta International Airport continued to exhibit an upward trend, with June passenger numbers further narrowing the gap created by the pandemic,” the MIA said today.
“With 603,532 passengers welcomed, marking a recovery of 83.6 per cent of pre-pandemic traffic, June has so far been the airport’s busiest month since October 2019.”
These figures were achieved on the back of a recovery of 80.8 per cent in aircraft movements and a recovery of 82.3 per cent in seat capacity.
The seat load factor (SLF) for the month of June increased by 1.4 per cent over pre-pandemic levels to stand at a healthy 85.5 per cent. A similar increase in SLF had also been registered in May 2022.
Having registered a slight increase in market share over May 2022, Italy tightened its grip on the top spot of MIA’s market leaderboard.
The United Kingdom, France and Germany also retained their positions from the previous month.
On the other hand, June saw the return of Spain among the airport’s top five markets following an absence of seven months, as Poland dropped to sixth place. In June, MIA welcomed the first Vueling flight from Bilbao in northern Spain, bringing the number of Spanish destinations served up to five.
Year-to-date traffic was roughly equivalent to full-year traffic for 2021, which year was brought to a close with 2.5 million passenger movements. Between January and June 2022, 2.3 million passengers travelled through MIA, translating to a recovery of 72.1 per cent of the traffic handled during the first half of 2019.
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