The latest monthly and/or three monthly results released by 15 airports around the world have been compiled by TRBusiness here, including Abu Dhabi, Copenhagen, Denver, Dublin, Frankfurt (plus Fraport airports: Antalya, Hanover, Lima, Ljubljana, Pulkovo St Petersburg, Varna and Burgas’ and Xi’an), Heathrow and Stansted.

 

ABU DHABI: Jan-Sept – 17.4m pax +18%

Abu Dhabi International Airport has reported impressive 18% growth in passenger traffic over the first three quarters of the year, with a total of 17,473,063 passengers. The top ten busiest routes for the first nine months of 2015 were the UK, US, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Qatar, Thailand and Germany.

 

Eng. Ahmad Al Haddabi, Chief Operations Officer at Abu Dhabi Airports said: “2015 has been a big growth year for us. September was another very busy month and the third consecutive month in which we welcomed over two million passengers. Increased global connectivity continues to be an important contributor to our overall success, and we are seeing a dramatic boost in demand across the vast majority of destinations served from AUH.”

 

Year-to-date growth on specific routes included a 44% increase in passengers travelling between Abu Dhabi and the US, a 27.3% rise in traffic to and from Australia, and 24.8% and 17.2% increases on flights between the UK and Germany.

 

Abu Dhabi International Airport is shortly expected to announce the winner of its new Midfield Terminal duty free contract.

 

 

COPENHAGEN: October – 2.4m pax +6.2%

A 6.2% rise in passenger numbers to 2,476,553 made the month of October the busiest ever at Copenhagen Airport, driven by long-haul intercontinental routes.

 

The newly-opened Pier C with its additional 6,300sq m of space to accommodate the biggest long-haul aircraft for intercontinental routes helped boost traffic by 7.1%.

 

New SAS routes include an additional twice-weekly service to Shanghai service, one to San Francisco and six to New York. Air Canada has also added an additional weekly frequency to Toronto.

 

 

Norwegian also launched new routes to Las Vegas, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands and Emirates has announced it will use its A380 on its service to Dubai this December. In addition, SAS will launch new routes to Miami and Boston, and Norwegian will also serve Boston from next year.

 

In the year to date, 22,607,558 million passengers have travelled through Copenhagen Airport, representing a 2.5% increase over last year.

 

DENVER: September – 4.1m pax +1.0%

Denver International Airport (DIA) handled 4,533,397 passengers in September, a one per cent rise compared to 4,489,372 passengers in September 2014 – but a new record for the busiest September in Denver aviation history.

The airport now expects to end the year in a strong position with projected record-setting passenger traffic for the months of November and December. Year-to-date passenger traffic was down by 0.5%, with 40,222,095 passengers compared to 40,428,960 passengers during the same time frame in 2014.

 

 

International passenger traffic also fell by nearly 3% in September due to lower numbers of pre-clearance passengers from Canada. By contrast, passenger traffic using Denver’s customs facilities increased more than 22% as Southwest, British Airways, Lufthansa, Icelandair and Volaris all saw strong international passenger increases.

 

DUBLIN: Jan-November 8th – 21.96m pax

Dublin Airport handled 21.71m passengers in 2014, although it had already passed this number by November 8 of this year with 21.96m and it is now hopeful it will break the all-time annual record of 23.5m set back in 2008.

 

Dublin Airport Managing Director Vincent Harrison said: “We’ve had a fantastic year, with passenger numbers up 15%, which is equivalent to almost 2.9m extra people using the airport so far this year. We’ve had 23 new routes this year and extra capacity on a large number of existing services.

 

Every month since April has been a new record month for traffic at Dublin Airport and I’d like to thank our airline customers and our passengers for that additional business.”

 

Dublin Airport is one of the fastest-growing airports in Europe this year, as it is expanding its passenger traffic by more than twice the European average, according to data from ACI Europe.

 

Continental European traffic is the largest segment of the market at Dublin Airport, up 15% to almost 11.4m, while passenger numbers flying between Dublin and the UK have increased by 15% to 7.6m so far this year. Transatlantic traffic is up 17% to 2.2m, and traffic to the Middle East and North Africa has increased by 29% to 695,000.

 

 

FRANKFURT: (plus Fraport airports: Antalya, Hanover, Lima, Ljubljana, Pulkovo St Petersburg, Varna and Burgas’ and Xi’an).

Frankfurt Airport handled 5.7m passengers in October, up 4.3% setting a new October record. By comparison, the 2014 October statistics were influenced by Lufthansa’s two-day pilot strike (with industrial disputes still a major problem at the airline-Ed].

 

Meanwhile Fraport AG’s international portfolio of airports – big and small – reported mostly positive results in October with Ljubljana Airport in Slovenia up 9.4% to 128,478 passengers and Lima Airport in Peru 11.7% to 1.6m. The Bulgarian Black Sea airports of Varna and Burgas saw traffic rise by 10.5% to 86,290 passengers, while Antalya Airport on the Turkish Riviera saw passenger numbers drop by 0.8% to 2.8m.

 

 

Russia’s St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport also declined by 5.1% to 1.1m passengers, while Hanover Airport in northern Germany recorded a 1.8% rise to 581,355 passengers. Traffic figures were also positive at Xi’an Airport in central China, up 8.7% to 2.9m passengers.

 

HEATHROW: October – 6.56m pax +3.9%

Heathrow Airport recorded a 3.9% increase in passenger traffic to 6.56m in October – the busiest ever October to date.

 

Airport management said that ‘larger, fuller, quieter aircraft’ drove the numbers with seats per aircraft up 2.1% to 209.3 while load factors increased by 2.3% to 77.9% and average passenger numbers per aircraft by 4.5% to 162.9.

 

 

 

Passenger volumes proved particularly strong to Mexico (+28%), China (+18%) and to the Middle East (+7%), as carriers continued to benefit from utilising more spacious aircraft including A380s.

 

 

STANSTED: October – 2m pax +8.6%.

Stansted Airport reported its 19th consecutive month of growth in October, with more than two million passengers corresponding to an 8.6% increase on the corresponding month last year.

 

 

Stansted also recorded the sixth consecutive 2m-passenger-month in row, which hasn’t happened since 2007. It also enjoyed the highest ever load factor for any October at 88%.

 

Meanwhile, the total number of passengers using Stansted in the last year rose to 22.3m, a rise of 15% over the previous 12 months. Ongoing growth has been helped by the return of SAS after 14 years with its new daily service to Gothenburg.