Bratislava airport (source: Sme - Jozef Jakubčo)
Bratislava airport has broken another record. It handled a total of 2,292,712 passengers in 2018, which is the highest annual number of passengers since its establishment in 1951.
In annual terms, the number of passengers increased by 18 percent.
“In its whole history, the airport has only reached the 2-million-passenger threshold twice before – in 2007 and 2008,” said Jozef Pojedinec, chairman of Bratislava airport’s board, as quoted in a press release. “And now, in 2018, not only have we achieved this threshold again, but with almost 2.3-million passengers, we added a significant surplus to the figure.”
Several records in 2018
In addition, the airport achieved several other records in 2018. For example, it reported the longest unbroken series of monthly records in passenger numbers in a row. The highest numbers of passengers were recorded in June, July, August, September and October.
Moreover, it handled the highest ever number of passengers in a single month, amounting to almost 350,000 passengers in July, while it also recorded the strongest vacation season in its history, with more than 1 million vacationers between June and September on both the scheduled and the charter flights.
The airport also beat the 300,000-passengers per month threshold twice in the same year: in July and August. It has never achieved the threshold twice in the same year before. Moreover, there was the largest network of connections, with 49 scheduled routes in the summer season. The airport also reported 12 new scheduled routes launched throughout one year, which is the most in recent history.
Where did people fly the most?
Altogether 30,366 landings and take-offs took place at the airport in 2018, an increase of 11 percent year-on-year.
Most passengers travelled from Bratislava on scheduled routes to London (Stansted and Luton), Dublin, Moscow, Milan and Skopje, or back.
During the summer season, the most passengers took charter flights to Antalya in Turkey, Hurghada in Egypt, Thessaloniki in Greece, Monastir in Tunisia and Bourgas in Bulgaria. The largest carrier remains Ryanair, followed by WizzAir, Smartwings, Pobeda, AirCairo and flydubai.
