Healthy traffic growth in first half of 2012

After the somewhat disappointing growth figures recorded in April and May, passenger numbers are showing strong recovery in June.  Brussels Airport welcomed 1,784,488 passengers last month, an increase of 3.3% on June 2011. This brings the growth rate for the first semester of 2012 to 2.4%.

In spite of the economic situation, especially on the European market, both the number of O&D passengers and the transfer passengers show a positive trend. Transfer traffic, which closely follows the strong development of intercontinental traffic, even grew by 17.7%. As in the previous months, the strongest growth was recorded in the long haul segment, driven partly by Brussels Airlines’ new route to New York and their sixth daily flight to Africa, and in the low cost segment.  

Contrary to the past few months, intra-European and leisure traffic are again showing growth in June. This is partly explained by the fact that this year the first holiday weekend fell in the month of June.

After the negative growth of recent months, the number of aircraft movements too has increased. In June we recorded 20,554 flights, up 0.7%. As usual, the increase in the number of flights is lower than the increase in passenger numbers. This is due to a higher average passenger payload compared to last year and the use of larger planes, particularly by Brussels Airlines.

Cargo did extremely well in June. The cargo volume carried grew in all segments (belly load and full-freighters) resulting in an overall increase of over 8%. Brussels Airport expects its cargo results once more to outperform those of its peer competitors in Europe.

In June, the network served from Brussels Airport was further strengthened by the start of Brussels Ailrines’ operations into New York, the return of Cyprus Airways with 6 weekly services to Larnaca and the launch by Jetairfly of two new destinations in Morocco: Fez and Rabat.