International growth tames Beast from the East
The continued strong growth in international passengers at Edinburgh Airport helped tame the Beast from the East and the impact caused by the adverse weather it experienced in March.
A total of 964,094 passengers passed through last month, flat on last year due to a number of delays and flight cancellations caused by severe snow at beginning of March.
Domestic passengers were most impacted, particularly services to and from southern England, with international routes less impacted, recording a 10% rise in international passengers.
Gordon Dewar, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Airport said: “The beginning of the month was tough due to the Beast from the East and that severe snow had an impact on airports across the UK, with closures, cancellations and delays.
“However, keeping our runway clear and open allowed our international services to continue and they were less impacted by the weather, helping us record a 10% rise in international passengers to offset the domestic issue.
“Again, the credit for that must go to the airport staff who worked extremely hard to maintain the runway and keep it open in incredibly difficult conditions, and I’m proud and thankful for the dedication shown by them – at all times.”
The suspension of Ryanair’s Stansted service also had an impact on domestic passengers, only coming back online at the end of the month.
Growth came from international passengers:
Ryanair – launched 13 new routes during 2017 which operated in March 2018 that did not operate in March 2017 (Milan Bergamo, Budapest, Carcassonne, Eindhoven, Friedrichshafen/ Baden, Katowice, Nantes, Porto, Prague, Valencia, Wroclaw, Toulouse and Venice Treviso). Hamburg (4 per week) and Szczecin (2 per week) launched for the 2018 summer season at the end of the March. More flights also operated to Fuerteventura than during last March.
Jet2.com – more flights operated to Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Paphos than during March 2017 and Funchal (Madeira) did not operate this time last year.
Eurowings – Dusseldorf and Munich operated for the whole of March 2018, they launched for the start of the IATA summer season at the end of March 2017.
Brussels Airlines – more passengers travelled on services with Brussels Airlines as a larger aircraft (an A319) operated the service.