Steep drop in January air passengers

Passenger movements at the airport last month fell by 11.8 per cent when compared to the same period last year.

Official figures show the airport handled just over 138,000 passengers in January, a drop of 18,430.

Aircraft traffic also fell by 10.4 per cent to just under 1,700 aircraft, resulting in a drop of seat capacity by 9.5 per cent.

Even cargo and mail handled at the airport declined by some 14.6 per. The decline was predicted by the airport management, which said last week that its "best estimate" for 2009 would see a drop of at least 5.5 per cent from last year's passenger numbers, which was actually a record year with more than 3.1 million people leaving or arriving on the island.

"I would be quite happy if we achieved 2.9 million passengers, given the current international situation," Malta International Airport chief executive Julian Jaegar said in a forecast.

Significantly, the latest statistics show that the number of passengers from the UK continued to drop, this time by 13.4 per cent. There was also a downturn in Italian and French passengers by 11.5 and 4.5 per cent respectively. Passengers from Germany also fell by 9.5 per cent.

In fact, the gloomy outlook for 2009 has been pinned partly to the fact that Germanwings, Volare and Norwegian Air will not be operating to Malta this summer. Ryanair has also stopped its Valencia operations and SAS will not operate from Oslo in the summer months.