Fraport starts off new year with strong growth

Frankfurt Airport (FRA) continues to be on a growth path in the New Year. In January 2018, Germany’s largest aviation hub recorded 4,549,717 passengers (up 7.6%). Once again European traffic was the main growth driver, increasing by 12.6%, while intercontinental traffic rose by 2.6%. Cargo (airfreight and airmail) throughput at Frankfurt Airport advanced by 1.3%.
Aircraft movements even surpassed FRA’s passenger growth, rising by 8.6 percent to 36,816 takeoffs and landings – mainly attributable to European traffic. Accumulated maximum takeoff weights (MTOWs) increased by 6.5 percent to about 2.3 million metric tons.
Fraport’s Group airports largely registered positive traffic performance in January 2018. Ljubljana Airport (LJU) in the Slovenian capital achieved a 12.3% rise to 100,375 passengers. Fraport’s international portfolio now includes the Brazilian airports of Fortaleza (FOR) and Porto Alegre (POA) since the beginning of the year. With a combined total of some 1.3 million passengers and an increase of 0.4%, traffic at FOR and POA remained stable in the reporting month.
Together, the 14 Greek regional airports posted a 5.1% slowdown in traffic to a total of 549,506 passengers. This is primarily due to runway renovation works at Thessaloniki Airport (SKG) – Fraport Greece’s busiest airport – which reported 309,586 passengers in the reporting month (down 12.2%). After SKG, the second and third busiest airports were Rhodes (RHO) with 58,673 passengers (up 6.3%) and Chania (CHQ) with 43,255 passengers (down 36.2%).
At Lima Airport (LIM) in the Peruvian capital, traffic increased by 9.3% to about 1.8 million passengers. Fraport’s Twin Star Airports of Varna (VAR) and Burgas (BOJ) on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast together welcomed 72,905 passengers, up 85.4%. Welcoming 800,077 air travelers, Antalya Airport (AYT) on the Turkish Riviera recorded a gain of 18.4% – thus continuing its rebound in January 2018. In northern Germany, Hanover Airport (HAJ) served 321,703 passengers (up 7.0%). St. Petersburg Airport (LED) in Russia reported a 9.8% increase in traffic to about 1.1 million passengers. Due to the Chinese New Year’s festival occurring later this year, Xi’an Airport (XIY) remained close to the previous year’s level with some 3.3 million passengers in January 2018 (down 0.1%).