Edinburgh Airport has recorded the busiest ever year for a Scottish airport with more than 14 million people passing through its doors in 2018.

A total of 14,310,403 people used Scotland’s busiest airport last year, up 6.5% on the previous year.

International growth was up 9.5% and domestic growth up almost 2%.

International passengers totalled 8,932,257 and domestic passengers numbered 5,378,146.

It comes after the airport reached 1 million passengers in December for the first time ever as 1,027,125 people passed through – an 11% increase on December 2017.

Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), which owns Edinburgh Airport, said last month that together with its co-shareholders it was selling 50.01% of Gatwick to France’s Vinci Airports for £2.9 billion.

GIP has explored a possible sale of Edinburgh Airport in the past — with investment bankers saying it could fetch up to £2 billion — but a potential sale was cancelled because Brexit uncertainties were affecting the price tag.

GIP bought Edinburgh Airport for £807 million from BAA more than six years ago.

Gordon Dewar, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Airport said: “From the Middle East to the Far East and Europe to America, we offer more than 150 destinations from Edinburgh and it’s that variety of choice which is driving our growth.

“Be it a city break in Copenhagen, a business conference in London or a family holiday to Dubai, we are catering across the spectrum …

“New routes and destinations for 2019 have already been announced and we’ll continue to add growth where we can.

“The uncertainty around Brexit obviously poses challenges and it’s crucial that we at least preserve access to that single aviation market that allows flights to pass freely through European skies, connecting Scotland to the whole of Europe.

“We also need to see movement on the pledge to cut Air Passenger Duty so we can continue to be competitive against other nations and harness the full potential of our industry and bolster the economy through tourism.

“There’s also infrastructure challenges such as our access road, a price we have to pay for our continued growth.

“We’re working on short and long-term solutions and that planning to improve access is something that will continue as we look ahead to what we hope is another successful year.”