Scotland two biggest airports had their business month ever in July with growth in international flights continuing to drive their expansion.
Edinburgh Airport experienced the busiest ever month at a Scottish airport with 1,413,272 passengers in July – up 6.1% on July 2016, the previous record month.
Glasgow Airport had more than 1,082,000 passengers in July –a 6.2% increase on July 2016.
Edinburgh Airport is owned by Global Infrastructre Partners, which also owns Gatwick Airport, London City Airport, Port of Brisbane, and Port of Melbourne.
Glasgow Airport is owned by AGS Airports, a partnership between Spanish company Ferrovial and Australia’s Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA), which was established in 2014 to invest in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports.
Edinburgh Airport chief executive Gordon Dewar said: “We are delighted to once again deliver the busiest ever month at a Scottish airport, highlighting the growing demand for flights in to and out of Edinburgh Airport …
“The summer months are always busy but these figures show that Edinburgh Airport is becoming more popular, especially with international visitors who want to come and experience what Scotland has to offer.
“We are determined to continue that growth and key to that will be providing more variety and options for our passengers.
“All of this work underpins our strategy for growth and will deliver wide ranging benefits to Scotland’s economy.”
Nineteen new international routes have launched from Edinburgh Airport in 2017 including Porto with Ryanair, Bilbao with easyJet, Thessaloniki with Jet2, Rhodes with Thomson, Palma with BA, Athens with Aegean and New York Providence and Connecticut with Norwegian.
At Glasgow Airport, international traffic grew by 10.1% in July with long-haul routes including Emirates’ daily double to Dubai, Delta Air Line’s New York flight and Virgin Atlantic’s direct Orlando service reporting particularly strong demand.
EU-scheduled services were up 14% thanks to additional capacity on a number of routes including Alicante, Palma and Dusseldorf, while city-break destinations such as Berlin, Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Madrid and Paris also proved popular.
Glasgow Airport also recorded its busiest day of the year so far on Friday, July 14, as 40,000 passengers passed through the terminal.
Amanda McMillan, managing director of Glasgow Airport, said: “July is traditionally our busiest period of the year as passengers head off on their summer holidays, but to record our busiest ever month in 51 years of operation is a significant achievement.
“We’ve set new passenger-number records in each month so far this year and our strong performance in 2017 is a result of our continued efforts to offer customers more choice through extra seats to popular routes and new destinations such as the new twice-weekly Ryanair service to Zadar launched last month.
“August is already proving busy thanks to large-scale events such as the return this week of the Piping Live festival and the World Pipe Band Championships.
“Both events are incredibly popular and will see the airport welcome thousands of visitors and participating musician from across the globe.
“We also expect the BWF World Championships to attract thousands of badminton fans when the tournament gets underway later this month.
“Looking ahead, Ryanair will introduce a number of new winter services in September and October to Frankfurt, Krakow and Madrid, while Lufthansa will also increase the current Munich service from one flight per week to four, ensuring we enter the second half of the year in a position of strength.”
