Edinburgh Airport is the busiest airport in Scotland

Posted by On August 17, 2018 0 Comment

Edinburgh Airport

The 1.5 million passenger barrier has been broken for the first time ever at a Scottish airport as Edinburgh Airport recorded its busiest ever month on record.

A total of 1,501,988 people passed through the airport in July 2018 – an increase of 6.3% on the same month last year, with growth in both domestic and international markets.

Gordon Dewar, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Airport said:

“These are fantastic figures for the airport, for Edinburgh and for Scotland, and they show an increase in passenger demand of 60% over the past 5 years – that is phenomenal growth and easily makes us one of Europe’s fasting growing airports.

“That growth is something we should be proud of as it delivers wide-ranging benefits for the country through job creation, tourism spend and business growth, but it also means we need to keep growing our infrastructure and build that additional capacity to cater for those increased numbers.

“We have invested huge sums already to keep up with that demand and are now for the first time in a position where we’re ahead of that curve thanks to a terminal expansion which will see us grow our passenger capacity to more than 17 million. That headroom is welcome and is a position we want to stay in and aim to do so through continued investment.

“Part of that wider picture is the need for improvements to the external infrastructure as well and that is an ongoing discussion with various partners as we must change and grow to maximise the opportunities that the airport brings.

“This extension is the beginning of a longer period of investment in our airport. Growth is our main strategic challenge and we will develop in order to enable growth for Edinburgh and Scotland as a whole.”

Domestic market was ahead of last year (+4.3%) due to the following reasons:

  • Flybe are flying more passengers overall compared to last year as they fly fuller aircraft
  • easyJet launched a new route (Jersey) earlier this year and had more flights to Bristol than last July

International market recorded a 7.3% YoY growth due to 24 new routes launched since last July. These are the reasons for the strong growth in more detail:

  • Ryanair operated 13 routes this July that weren’t operated this time last year. The routes launched since July 2017 are: Budapest, Carcassonne, Eindhoven, Baden-Baden (Karlsruhe), Hamburg, Katowice, Nantes, Prague, Szczecin, Toulouse, Venice Treviso, Valencia & Wroclaw.
  • Jet2 are flying a bigger & fuller aircraft on more destinations, and since last July introduced 4 new destinations: Antalya, Dalaman, Kos & Funchal
  • Airlines serving transatlantic routes are filling up their planes more than last year, showing a strong demand for this market
  • United airlines’ new Washington DC service is proving to be very popular with strong passenger numbers
  • We launched a new service to Beijing with Hainan Airlines & a new service to Tel Aviv (Israir)
  • Brussels airlines are flying a bigger aircraft than last year

Popular destinations (among others) in July were:

  • transatlantic routes: New York City, Chicago, Toronto & Washington D.C.
  • Spain: Alicante, Malaga, Valencia & Canary Islands
  • Greece: Athens & islands: Rhodes, Crete, Zante and other islands
  • Other popular Med destinations: Cyprus, Croatia, Venice, Nice, Dalaman
  • Poland: Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk, Poznan, Katowice & Wroclaw
  • City destinations: Florence, Lisbon, Berlin, Geneva, Prague, Copenhagen, Kaunas, Bratislava & Budapest

Compared to July 2017 we served 25 new routes this July:

  • 24 new international routes
  • 1 new domestic route

source: Travel Daily News