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Frankfurt Airport: Solid Q1 growth despite strikes and weather-related cancellations |
GERMANY. Frankfurt Airport handled 4.6 million passengers in March, an increase of +2.5% year-on-year and a record for the month. The growth came despite the impact of the Lufthansa pilot strike for four days and of Hurricane Niklas on 31 March, which disrupted the flight schedule.
Excluding these events that resulted in about 1,250 flight cancellations, passenger volumes would have risen by an additional 150,000.
In the first three months, Frankfurt Airport handled more than 12.5 million passengers, up by +2.7% year-on-year. This was an increase of around 260,000 on the previous Q1 record set in 2008, despite the influence of strikes, winter weather and storms. Particularly strong growth in the period came from Asian traffic as well as travel to and from tourist destinations in North Africa.
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Fraport’s international airport portfolio also posted healthy results overall. Peru’s Lima Airport handled four million passengers in the quarter, a strong rise of +8.6%, while Antalya Airport in Turkey posted +6.3% growth to 2.4 million.
With 236,263 passengers (down -0.2%), Ljubljana Airport in Slovenia maintained nearly the same passenger level as last year. The Bulgarian Twin-Star airports of Varna and Burgas received a total 96,821 passengers (up +7.4%) in the first quarter of the year.
St. Petersburg Airport in Russia registered a slight decline of -0.6% to 2.47 million, while Xi’an Airport in China posted a +17.6% surge to more than 7.6 million passengers in the first three months of the year. In the northern German state of Lower Saxony, Hanover Airport recorded a +5.3% jump to 974,487 passengers.
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The Fraport Group performance in March (above) and in Q1 (below) |
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