Brussels Airport: cargo traffic shows strong recovery in October

20-Nov-2013

Passengers
Brussels Airport handled 1.7 million passengers in October 2013, up 1.3% on the previous corresponding month. During the first ten months of this year, the airport welcomed 16.5 million passengers, which corresponds to a 0.5% increase on 2012.

The number of local departing passengers increases by 1.0%. The number of departing transfer and transit passengers is on the up with a 4.4% growth on pcp.

In October, the best performing segments are the low-fare operations and regular intra-European scheduled services. Long haul too again shows positive growth in October.

Aircraft movements
The number of aircraft movements decreases by 3.9%, with passenger flights down 4.3% due to the use of larger aircraft.

Cargo: positive growth for the first time this year…
As became clear over the past few months, cargo traffic at Brussels Airport is slowly but steadily recovering. In October, cargo traffic showed positive growth for the first time in 13 months. All segments were doing better than last year and the total volume of cargo carried increased by 4.4%. The number of flights is still lagging behind on last year's but the cargo load factor was much higher. Moreover, in November, we will see the launch of several new routes, leading us to expect that this trend will continue.

Network
During the past few weeks, several airlines announced their plans for 2014. Brussels Airlines will resume flights to Athens and will increase its frequency on Tel Aviv and Corsica. Jetairfly will fly from Brussels Airport to Miami, Tel Aviv and Istanbul, Thomas Cook Airlines to Split, and Sun Express to Izmir. US Airways launches a seasonal service to Charlotte (North Carolina) with convenient connections to a large network of destinations in the US. Vueling will start services to 7 new destinations (Rome, Venice, Lisbon, Porto, Ibiza, Palma de Mallorca and Santiago de Compostela) and easyJet to 2 new destinations (Bordeaux and Naples). bmi regional reintroduces two daily flights to Newcastle.