Larnaca airport third for passenger traffic increase among airports in its category

Larnaca airport has remained third among the European airports with passenger traffic of 5 to 10 million per year, which had the largest increase in passenger traffic since March.

European airport trade body, ACI EUROPE on Friday released its air traffic report for June. The report reveals that during the first half of this year, passenger traffic at Europe’s airports grew by an average +9.0 per cent.

“In the first half of the year, Larnaca International Airport managed to maintain its third place on the passenger traffic increase chart since last March, among all international airports in Europe, in the category of 5 to 10 million passengers per year,” said airports’ operator Hermes.

Larnaca airport ranked third, with an increase of 22.7 per cent or 571,926 additional passengers, preceded by Keflavik International Airport (Iceland), with 39.7 per cent and Kiev International Airport (Ukraine) which occupies the second place with an increase in passenger traffic of 29.4 per cent.

Hermes said that in the group of airports with 5 to 10 million passengers per year, Larnaca continued to be the first among all the international airports of the European Union member states that had achieved the biggest increase in passenger traffic.

ACI EUROPE said in its report that the EU and non-EU markets ended up posting similar growth levels in passenger traffic – respectively at +8.7 per cent and +9.9 per cent.

In the EU, the Benelux along with Cyprus, Malta and Portugal in the South as well as Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia to the East all achieved double digit growth. In the non-EU market, Albania, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro and Ukraine each grew by well above +20 per cent.

Europe’s Top 5 busiest airports recorded a passenger traffic increase of +4.3 per cent in the first half of the year – a notable improvement over their 2016 performance (+1.6 per cent). Amsterdam-Schiphol topped the league in terms of growth (+8.7 per cent), followed by Paris-CDG (+5.2 per cent), Frankfurt (+4.5 per cent). Capacity-constrained London-Heathrow still managed to grow (+3.9 per cent), while Istanbul-Atatürk kept regaining lost ground (-1.1 per cent), said the Brussels – based organisation.