Aéroport Lyon-Saint Exupéry: Record of Traffic 2015

In 2015, Aéroport Lyon-Saint Exupéry welcomed 8,703,354 passengers. In a generally unfavorable economic climate, the traffic of the Aéroports de Lyon recorded an increase of 2,8% compared to 2014. The growth of other companies operating at the airport (+4%) managed to make up for the drop in traffic for HOP! Air France (-1,2%) whose market share of Lyon-Saint Exupéry represents 29,3%.

International traffic was particularly strong at Lyon-Saint Exupéry (+4,2%). In 2015 it represented 5,644,716 passengers and 65% of total traffic, as opposed to 63% and 64% respectively in 2013 and 2014.

Routes to the south of Europe continued to rise in 2015 with: Portugal (+15,1% and 348,057 passengers), Spain (+12,5% and 758,942 passengers), Greece (+13,3% with 205,662 passengers), Italy (+11,7% with 488,329 passengers).

These encouraging results followed on from numerous openings of routes introduced in 2014 by companies such as Vueling, easyJet, Transavia.com and Aegean.

In 2015, Iberia Express added to these new introductions by offering more seats to Madrid (+19,8% with 220,325 passengers) and by opening a Lyon-Tenerife route (+7,7% with 20,769 passengers). Ireland also benefitted from an increase in frequency of Aer Lingus flights (with a 13% increase), and now a daily flight to Dublin being offered. Another highlight was the increase in routes to the United Kingdom (+2,5% with 627,594 passengers). Germany (-2,2%) and Belgium (-0,5%) however, did not experience an increase. At the end of the year, EasyJet opened four new routes to Amsterdam, Belfast, London-Southend and Naples. XL Airways also introduced a new route to Reunion Island.

This trend for new destinations should continue in 2016, with the opening of new direct routes. Aegan will launch a route to Kalamata, Air Canada a direct route to Montreal and route to Bucharest will be opened by Blue Air. ASL will launch a route to Hamburg. EasyJet will see the opening of 6 routes including Budapest, Catania, Copenhagen, Faro, Minorca and Mykonos. HOP! will open a link to Luxembourg and Transavia.com plan to open flights to Faro, Lisbon and Valencia.

Despite the opening of new routes to Istanbul with the low-cost company Pegasus, Turkey saw its traffic decrease by 2,7%, suspected to have been caused by the terror attacks which took place in 2015. Whilst traffic to Algeria fared well (+5,9%), Morocco (-6,6%) and Tunisia (-16,3%) also saw a decrease in traffic compared to 2014. The Emirates route to Dubai continued to make good progress, with +13,5% compared to 2014.

The domestic traffic, which was made up of 2,991,101 passengers saw a slight increase of 0,3% in comparison to 2014. Connections with Paris (+2%) made up for the drop in French regional routes including Brest (-11,6%) and Nice (-13,3%). Other cross-country routes however, recorded agreeable increases, such as Bordeaux (+3,5% with 474,130 passengers) Nantes (+6,6% with 387,111 passengers) and also Toulouse (+4,3% with 360,186 passengers).

The top two internal stopovers in terms of traffic were Paris CDG with 490,337 passengers and Bordeaux with 474,130 passengers. Internationally, London (with 536,096 passengers) was ahead of Barcelona (301,781 passengers) and Frankfurt (293,359 passengers).