AUSTRALIA. In August all airports in the Macquarie portfolio posted a year-on-year improvement in passenger traffic, with international traffic at Sydney airport returning to positive growth for the first time since February 2003 and with Birmingham handling one million passengers in August for the first time in its history.
Macquarie Airports ceo Kerrie Mather said in a statement: “MAp considers the August positive traffic result as further evidence of the diminishing impact of recent global uncertainty and SARS.”
Sydney airport
International passengers grew +0.3% year-on-year while overall traffic increased by +3.6% year-on-year in August.
Australian travellers, Sydney’s largest group of travellers, increased +3% year-on-year (in July this figure was -7% year-on-year). However, New Zealand travellers declined by -5% year-on-year, compared to +17% year-on-year in July.
Passenger numbers for Asia remain mixed, but showed improvement relative to July. China declined -29% (July -32%), Japan declined -31% (July -38%) year-on-year in August.
The UK market grew +6% and the US fell -1% year-on-year.
Sydney airport also welcomed the launch of Australian Airlines services to Japan and Emirates services to New Zealand in August.
Aeroporti di Roma
In August 2003, Rome airports’ traffic continued to experience strong growth. Total August traffic was up +10.4% year-on-year.
The overall improvement was made up of a +8.3% increase at Fiumicino and a +52.1% increase at Ciampino airport.
Intra EU traffic increased by +14.5% year-on-year in August, driven by the continuing rapid growth of low fare services at Ciampino and strong demand at Fiumicino.
Extra-EU traffic was up +9.6%, continuing a rapid recovery in demand following the end of the Iraq War and lower public concern over SARS.
Hapag Lloyd Express has announced that it will introduce a daily service to Stuttgart from Ciampino this winter. In addition, Ryanair has announced that it will increase its daily services to Brussels Charleroi from Ciampino to a twice daily service from November.
Birmingham International airport
Total passenger traffic grew by +12.9% year-on-year. Birmingham handled just over 1 million passengers in a month for the first time in its history (1,017,452 passengers in total).
International scheduled traffic rose by +25.1% with intra-EU traffic growing by +30.8%, again reflecting the impact of new low fare services. Traffic to the Indian sub-continent also increased by +28.4% year-on-year for August.
International charter traffic was up +3.8% year-on-year with more passengers travelling to Greece (+22.2%), Tunisia (+21.9%), Cyprus (+12.4%), Italy (+9.4%) and Turkey (+8.9%).
The growth in scheduled traffic has been consistent throughout the summer season with the increased availability of low fares and new destinations from Birmingham. This pattern is set to continue during the coming winter with the introduction of eight new scheduled routes to Almeria, Cologne, Gerona, Helsinki, Inverness, Oslo, Salzburg and Tenerife.
Bristol International airport
Total traffic at Bristol airport increased by +10.2% year-on-year in August.
International scheduled flights increased by +20.6% driven by continued low fare growth; together with the three times daily Air France service to Paris Charles De Gaulle airport.
Charter traffic rose by +1.5% year-on-year, marking an improvement on recent months as bookings recover following war in Iraq and SARS. Sales for the winter ski destinations are reported to be strong with volumes +5% ahead of last year.
FlyBE has announced that it will be launching a daily service to Toulouse from 23 October and plans to launch more low fare services from Bristol to destinations including Bordeaux, Bergerac and Murcia from March 2004.
