Zürich Airport handled 27.7m passengers in 2016 (+5.3%) for the very first time as the number of flight movements rose by +1.5%.

 

Breaking the numbers down, local passenger numbers rose by 6.5% to 20m last year and airport management added that despite the fall in the proportion of transfer passengers from 28.5% in 2015 to 27.6% in 2016, transfer passengers rose at Zürich by 2.3% to 7.6m.

 

The average number of passengers per flight rose from 113.7 to 117.2, while seating capacity to and from Zürich rose 6.6%. However, aircraft occupancy declined by 1.3% in 2016 to 75.8%.

 

RECORD PASSENGERS AND ANOTHER AWARD

In total there were 269,160 flight movements at Zürich, corresponding to an increase of 1.5% compared with the previous year. Swiss International Air Lines’ share of air traffic amounted to 54.2%, followed by Air Berlin (6.5%), Edelweiss Air (4.2%), Eurowings (3.0%) and British Airways (2.6%).

 

Meanwhile, in the month of December a total of 2,102,422 passengers used the airport, corresponding to a +10.5% rise on the previous year. Local passenger numbers rose by 9.3% and transfer passengers by 14.1%.

 

These latest numbers follow last September’s World Travel Award to Zürich as Europe’s best for the 12th year in a row for its customer-friendliness and general quality standards of products and services.

 

In its category, Zürich Airport beat eight other airport competitors who were: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hamburg, London Heathrow, Lisbon, Munich, Pristina and Paris Charles de Gaulle.