MIXED FORTUNES FOR FRAPORT’S AIRPORT GROUP IN JULY

Frankfurt Airport (FRA) welcomed more than 6.9 million passengers in July, up 0.8% on the corresponding month a year ago.

The total means that 2.6% more passengers have passed through the gateway in the first seven months of 2019 than the same period last year.

Aircraft movements in July 2019 climbed by 1% to 47,125 take-off and landings, while accumulated maximum takeoff weights (MTOWs) expanded by 2.4% to over 2.9 million metric tons. 

The German airport’s cargo throughput (airfreight + airmail) also grew by 1.5% to 178,652 tonnes during the month of July.

Across the group, Fraport’s international portfolio of airports reported mixed fortunes in July in terms of traffic trends.

Slovenia’s Ljubljana Airport (LJU) achieved a 4.2% jump in traffic to 207,292 passengers, for example, while its Brazilian airports of Fortaleza (FOR) and Porto Alegre (POA) reported a combined year-on-year decline of 9.9% as they handled a total of 1.3 million passengers.

Among other things, Fraport attributes the decline in traffic at its Brazilian airports to the bankruptcy of Avianca Brasil – whereby other carriers temporarily were unable to fully absorb the traffic volume. 

There was good news in Peru, however, with nearly 2.1 million passengers (+4.9%) passing through Lima Airport (LIM), although Fraport’s 14 Greek airports recorded a slight 0.8% dip in numbers, handling 5.3 million passengers between them.

Fraport claims that “this light downturn resulted from the consolidation of flight offers by some airlines serving the Greek market”. 

Passenger numbers were also down at Bulgaria’s Black Sea airports of Varna (VAR) and Burgas (BOJ), which together served about 1.2 million passengers (-13.2%), but Turkey provided a ray of sunshine with throughput at Antalya Airport (AYT) soaring 11.7% in July.

Other July traffic gains were also recorded at St Petersburg-Pulkovo Airport in Russia (+4.9%) and X’ian Xianyang in China (+7.4%).