Milan Rastislav Štefánik Airport in Bratislava (source: SITA)
If this trend continues also in the second half of the year, the airport will end the year with an increase in the number of passengers for the first time in the past six years, the Trend economic weekly reported on its website.
The current numbers are mostly the result of the first quarter of 2015 when the number of passengers rose by a third. In the second quarter, however, the increase was lower. The fact is, however, that the number has increased every month since the beginning of the year.
“We expect the number of passengers to increase by hundreds of thousands of people,” head of the Bratislava airport Ivan Trhlík told Trend. The airport recorded 1.35 million passengers last year.
Over 305,000 passengers passed through departures in the first half of the year which equated to more than 50 percent of total passenger throughput and 21 percent year on year increase. Approximately 276,000 passengers passed through arrivals and an additional 6,000 passed through to other destinations.
The increase in airport traffic has been caused mostly by the decision of Irish low-cost airline Ryanair to establish a new base at the aiport in March 2015. This resulted in more frequent flight connections, and also new routes to Athens and Madrid. There is also a new connection to Dubai operated by the flydubai airline, which flies three times a week, and has affected the positive development of the airport, Trend wrote.
Regarding the total number of passengers, Ryanair tops the list with nearly 460,000. Second came Czech Travel Service with some 62,000 passengers, followed by Czech Airlines with some 16,000 people, and flydubai with more than 13,000 people.
When it comes to destinations, the most popular were flights to London Stansted, Dublin, London Luton, Milano-Bergamo, Roma-Ciampino, and Brussels-Charleroi airports. The interest in flying to Liverpool and Barcelona has also increased, Trend reported.
