EDINBURGH IS FASTEST GROWING UK AIRPORT FOR INTERNATIONAL PASSENGERS

Edinburgh Airport has today welcomed new figures showing that it is officially the UK’s fastest growing airport in terms of international passengers.

The 21% growth in international passengers from 2015 - 2016 at Edinburgh pipped the Luton for top spot in the table of UK airports above 1m international passengers.

This successful expansion has been reinforced by the fact Edinburgh Airport now, for the first time ever, has over 200 routes on sale.

Welcoming this Edinburgh Airport’s Chief Executive Gordon Dewar, said:

“This expansion of routes in and out of Edinburgh Airport generates more growth for Scotland’s economy and creates work and leisure opportunities for people and businesses.

“Growth also continues to expand the opportunity for people from overseas to come and visit Scotland.

“We have a healthy equilibrium of inbound and outbound passengers with the most balanced mix of any UK airport outside London.

“The blend of increasing long haul routes, the enhanced choice to destinations across Europe and an unrivalled range of services to London and domestic locations has proved to be a winning combination.

“This growth reinforces the strength and appeal of Edinburgh as a destination and the global draw of Scotland, giving us greater confidence as we look to the future.” 

ENDS

Notes:

Edinburgh Airport is the fastest growing airport in terms of International passengers* in the UK (airports above 1m international passengers)

*All figures from the Civil Aviation Authority

200+ Routes with growth driven by:

• 34 new routes will start in 2017 and will be operated by 9 airlines.
• 12 routes will be additional services to existing destinations thus providing more choice to our passengers (e.g. Thomson to Malaga, Aegean to Athens or Ryanair to Budapest)
• 2 routes will provide a greater connectivity over our existing hub network
  • Flybe will strengthen connections over Heathrow, where passengers will be able to connect to most of non-BA airlines (e.g. Emirates, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines). This will fill the gap left after Virgin Atlantic left the market
  • Eurowings introductions to EDI completes the Lufthansa Group hub network from EDI. Lufthansa currently operates 2x daily Frankfurt service departing at lunch time and early evening. Eurowings service will be coming to EDI in early morning thus giving Lufthansa the benefit of having 3 bank structures (morning, afternoon, evening) throughout the day from EDI and further improving their connectivity from EDI (the morning flight from Munich will flow pax to Europe and beyond via MUC, while the afternoon flight from Frankfurt will bring pax from all over the world)
• Edinburgh has also strengthened connectivity to regional France with direct services to Nantes, Toulouse, Carcassonne. Regional France is very popular with EDI passengers
• Ryanair’s announcement of 3 new Polish routes from EDI will take the overall number of EDI – Poland routes to 8 which is the largest number of routes to Poland from any Scottish airport
• Norwegian routes to North America strengthen our transatlantic offerings and create completely new markets for people visiting Scotland and the USA. This should significantly boost our inbound mix of passengers from North America