Rugby fans help Edinburgh Airport score with 8.2% rise in February passenger numbers
Edinburgh Airport enjoyed an 8.2% increase in its passenger figures as over 657,000 people travelled through the terminal in February.
A total of 657,386 passengers took off and landed at Edinburgh Airport last month, with a healthy boost thanks to the thousands of rugby fans travelling to Scotland from Italy and Wales.
Domestic passenger figures rose by 9.5% from 338,770 in February last year to 370,907 in 2015.
International passengers also saw a significant growth with 286,479 people travelling in February, an increase of 6.5%.
The addition of more daily flights between Edinburgh and London helped drive the passenger growth with introduction of new services from Ryanair to Stansted and Flybe to London City in October last year.
British Airways also performed well on their BA Cityflyer service to London City which now operates up to 12 times per day.
Gordon Dewar, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Airport, said: "After starting the New Year on a solid footing we enjoyed a strong February with our passenger numbers up over 8%. This is great news for our airlines, our passengers and Edinburgh’s economy as many people no doubt travelled here for the RBS 6Nations.
"Strong performances in both our domestic and international traffic helped drive our growth last month with new services launching to Madeira with easyJet, increased flights to Dublin with Ryanair and larger aircraft operating between Edinburgh and Paris on AirFrance’ HOP! route.
"We have a number of routes operating which weren’t in place last year and this has also helped drive our passenger numbers. Qatar Airlines, which launched last May, are delivering over 7000 more passengers than we had last February.
"We’re looking forward to a busy few months as we prepare to welcome even more new airlines to Edinburgh. Of course we can only continue to drive passenger growth and our economy if our calls to reduce and abolish Air Passenger Duty are answered.
"The report we published earlier this this week shows that a 50% reduction in this damaging tax would create almost 4000 jobs and add £1 billion to the Scottish economy by 2020."
The moving annual total for the year ending 28 February was 10,261,485.
About Edinburgh Airport:
Edinburgh Airport is Scotland's busiest airport. More than 40 airlines serve 100-plus destinations and 10.2 million passengers passed through the airport in 2014 – the busiest year ever for a Scottish airport.
July 2014 was the airport’s busiest month ever with over 1.1 million passengers travelling through its terminal.
It is the 6th largest in the UK, in terms of passenger numbers, and employs over 5000 people, contributing hundreds of millions of pounds to Scotland’s economy.
Edinburgh Airport was named best in Britain, and top three in Europe, for passenger satisfaction, at the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) Awards for 2012 and ‘Best European Airport (5-10m passengers)’ at the ACI EUROPE Best Airport Awards for 2012. It has also won Scottish Airport of the Year at the Scottish Transport Awards in 2013 and 2014.