Fraport Traffic Figures – Jan. 2012: Off to a Flying Start in the Year of the Dragon / Group Airports Achieve Strong 6.6% Growth

February 13, 2012 flight2000it

AG welcomed 4.1 million passengers at Frankfurt Airport (FRA) in the first month of the New Year – resulting in a 5.5 percent traffic jump year-on-year at Germany’s largest airport. Reasons for this growth included the favorable winter weather conditions (absence of snow) which contributed to optimum operations in January 2012. FRA’s strong punctuality figure of 85.1 percent in January 2012 was also positively affected by the favorable weather, in combination with increased capacity and operational flexibility created by the new Runway Northwest inaugurated in October 2011.

Aircraft movements at Frankfurt Airport rose slightly by 0.7 percent to 37,651 takeoffs and landings year-on-year. In comparison, total accumulated maximum takeoff weights (MTOWs) slipped by 1.6 percent to approximately 2.2 million metric tons. In the airfreight segment, traffic dropped by 16.8 percent to 141,340 metric tons year-on-year. Factors contributing to this decline included uncertainty in the global economy as well as the existing nighttime flight curfew imposed at the beginning of FRA’s Winter Timetable 2011/2012. Another factor was the impact on Far East traffic of the production slowdown during the two-week-long Chinese New Year’s festival that started on January 23rd – whereas last year it fell completely in the month of February. Airmail posted a visible gain of 3.0 percent to about 6,900 metric tons year-on-year.

Fraport’s five majority-owned airports (AYT, FRA, BOJ, LIM, VAR) served a total of 5.7 million passengers in the reporting month – growing by 6.6 percent year-on-year. Increasing by 8.0 percent year-on-year, traffic at Peru’s Lima Airport (LIM) exceeded the one million passenger mark in January 2012. Antalya Airport (AYT) on the Turkish Riviera recorded nearly 600,000 passengers, representing double-digit growth of 14.5 percent year-on-year.

On the Bulgaria Black Sea coast, traffic surged at Burgas Airport (BOJ) by more than 150 percent to some 21,000 passengers. This rise can be attributed partially to the diversion of traffic from Varna Airport (VAR), which has been temporarily closed for reconstruction work from October 15, 2011, to February 28, 2012.

Source: Fraport