Positive Traffic Performance in the First Quarter Helped by the Timing of the Easter Holidays, the Non-Recurrence of Previous Year’s Flight Cancellations and an Additional Leap Day – Fraport’s Group Airports Continue to See Varying Results – Strong Growth Achieved in March 2016
In the month of March 2016, some 4.8 million passengers passed through Frankfurt Airport, up 3.9 percent. The previous March record from 2015 was thus exceeded by around 180,000 passengers. The strong performance was helped by the timing of the Easter holidays at the end of March, as well as the non-recurrence of strike and weather-related flight cancellations occurred in March 2015. With 37,503 takeoffs and landings, aircraft movements remained at last year’s level (up 0.8 percent). Maximum takeoff weights were up again by 3.2 percent to approximately 2.4 million metric tons, reflecting the ongoing trend by airlines of using larger aircraft types. Cargo volumes decreased by 1.3 percent to 187,063 metric tons in March 2016, due to the production slowdown in connection with different timing of the Easter holidays.
Fraport AG’s international portfolio reported varying performance across the Group’s airports during the first quarter of 2016. Slovenia’s Ljubljana Airport (LJU) welcomed 245,466 passengers in the first three months of the year – an increase of 3.9 percent. With almost 4.5 million passengers served, Lima Airport (LIM) in the capital city of Peru saw passenger traffic rise by 11.5 percent. The two Bulgarian Twin Star Airports of Varna (VAR) and Burgas (BOJ) combined welcomed around 117,000 passengers, achieving passenger growth of 20.9 percent. Passenger figures at Antalya Airport (AYT) in Turkey and Pulkovo Airport (LED) in St. Petersburg, Russia, decreased by 2.8 percent to just under 2.4 million passengers and 6.2 percent to about 2.3 million passengers respectively. Almost 1 million passengers used Hanover Airport (HAJ) in northern Germany during the first quarter of the current year, up 3.4 percent. Xi’an Airport (XIY) in China welcomed some 8.6 million passengers – an increase of 13 percent.
