August 2013: record month for Brussels Airport with highest passenger load factor ever

10-Sep-2013

Passengers
With all but 2 million passengers, Brussels Airport records the best month of August in the past 13 years. With a growth of 1.6% traffic is firmly recovering after the slight decline recorded in July.

The number of originating passengers departing from Brussels Airport increases by 3.5%. The number of transfer and transit passengers continues to decrease; this can still be accounted for by the fact that last year several long-haul carriers decided to cut back their offer.

All passenger traffic segments have shown growth in August. In the intra-European segment, low cost is growing slightly faster than the leisure flights and scheduled services. In the long-haul segment, Brussels Airlines in particular is compensating for the loss of a number of foreign carriers.

Aircraft movements
The number of aircraft movements decreases by 1.5% to 18,834. The average number of passengers per flight hence increases from 112 to 117. An all-time record: the load factor on passenger flights to and from Brussels Airport was never higher.

Cargo
As in previous months, cargo traffic continues to recover slowly in August. However, with a 6.1% decrease it still remains significantly below last year's result.

The August cargo figures confirm the trends we've noticed in the past few months: integrator traffic registers strong growth whereas the other segments continue to lose ground.

Full-freighter traffic in particular is suffering from the economic crisis. The fact that the air transport agreement between Belgium and Taiwan still hasn't been signed has led to EVA air cancelling its cargo operation at Brussels Airport. A few years ago this carrier operated a six weekly service to BRU, which represented direct employment for over 300 people.

The restrictions on the runway use during the works on runway 07L/25R in August had an impact on the maximum take-off weight and consequently also on the cargo volumes carried.

New routes
Brussels Airlines plans to start a new two weekly service to Alicante as of October. As of April 2014, Jetairfly will operate two flights a week to Miami. In 2014 Icelandair intends to increase its frequency on Reykjavik and Air Serbia will up the number of flights to Belgrade.