Airport braced for hard landing

Malta's airport is expecting a steep drop in passengers on the heels of a record year which saw more than 3.1 million people leaving or arriving on the island.

A 5.5 per cent drop from last year's passenger numbers is a "best estimate", Malta International Airport chief executive Julian Jaeger said.

"I would be quite happy if we achieve 2.9 million passengers, given the current international situation," he said at a press conference yesterday.

The predicted drop is being contributed to by the fact that Germanwings, Volare and Norwegian Air will not be operating in summer. Ryanair has also stopped its Valencia operation and SAS will not operate from Oslo in the summer months.

Last year the airport saw a jump of 4.7 per cent in passenger movements - by far out performing the average European increase of 0.4 per cent. The MIA's increase is also higher than the 2.86 average for airports with less than five million passengers a year.

Cargo movements increased by 1.3 per cent last year, although a drop is expected in 2009 even there.

Passenger figures for the first quarter of this year are expected to be significantly below the first three months of last year, when a record 540,000-odd passengers used the airport - a staggering 21.3 per cent more than in the first quarter of 2007.

The situation remained positive throughout the second quarter but figures started to dwindle and the rate of increase was reduced to a wafer-thin 0.3 per cent in the third quarter.

As the financial crisis started to bite, passenger numbers plummeted by 6.5 per cent between October and December compared to the same period in 2007.

But even when things were looking up, there were mixed trends from different markets.

In fact, while the German market saw an increase of more than 12 per cent, the number of British tourists dropped by 4.2 per cent.

Although Mr Jaeger believes that chartered planes will not cease to exist, their share of the market has dropped from 17 per cent in 2007 to less than 10 per cent last year. Even legacy carriers saw a four per cent fall, affected by the acquisition of British Airways franchise GB Airways by Easyjet in October 2007.

On the other hand, low cost carriers more than doubled their share of the market, from 9.2 per cent in 2007 to 21 per cent last year.

According to Mr Jaeger, the fall in oil prices could encourage low cost airlines to open more routes since it is more cost-effective than leaving their planes on the ground.

Despite the global financial crisis, Mr Jaeger does not think that there is any need for a cost-cutting exercise at this point. He said the airport would not stop its investment programme since it was still confident that traffic would pick up again after this year. The MIA is currently undergoing an expansion of its terminal building, which should be fully refurbished by June.

Factbox

• 1.7 million: passengers carried last year by Air Malta giving it 56 per cent of the total traffic.

• 139 per cent: the increase in the number of passengers carried by low cost carriers in 2008 over the previous year.

• 42.57 per cent: the drop in passenger movements on charter carriers between 2007 and 2008.

• August 9: the day when the airport saw the most traffic, more than 16,600 passenger movements in a day.