GERMANY. Frankfurt Airport handled 4.9 million passengers in August, down by just -0.4% on August 2008. The result prompted Dr. Stefan Schulte, Executive Board Chairman of Frankfurt Airport owner Fraport, to say he was optimistic that the passenger traffic decline has bottomed out.
Schulte said: “From month to month the traffic decline is lessening. In the passenger segment, we have almost reached the previous year’s level during August 2009 – especially because of the base-year effect from the weakening economy in the second half of 2008. With improving positive development, we have a good chance of ending the year with a passenger decline of only -5% to -6%. Up to now, we had been expecting -6% to -9% fewer passengers than in the previous year.”
Cumulative figures for the first eight months of 2009 show an average decline of -6.3% for passenger traffic, and -5.6% for aircraft movements.
At Fraport’s majority-owned foreign airports Lima Airport, in particular, continued to report stable traffic with 783,001 passengers – down -0.2% compared to August 2008. Medium-haul destinations in the Mediterranean felt the “consumer restraint” of vacation travellers, said Fraport. Some 1,322,596 passengers used the terminals at Antalya Airport, down -3.7% from the previous year. On Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, Burgas Airport served 491,254 passengers (down -9.3%) and Varna Airport received 290,591 passengers (down -17.4%).
The group airports welcomed a total of about 7.8 million passengers in August 2009, -2.3% below the previous year’s figure.
 |
MORE STORIES ON FRAPORT & FRANKFURT AIRPORT
Frankfurt Airport serves up new dining options – 17/07/09
[comments]
