Brussels Airport: growth continues through September

10-Oct-2013

Passengers
With 1.9 million passengers handled in September, Brussels Airport continues to record growth. After the 1.6% growth registered in August, passenger numbers increased by 0.5% in September.

The number of originating passengers departing from Brussels Airport increased by 1% compared to the same month last year. However, traffic figures continue to show a decrease in the number of transfer and transit passengers due to the loss of several long-haul flights at the end of last year.

The best performing segments in September are low-cost and intra-Europe scheduled flights. Leisure traffic has suffered from the large number of cancelled flights to Egypt. Brussels Airport is the only Belgian airport to offer flights to this destination.

Aircraft movements
The number of flights decreases by 0.7% with passenger flights down 2.2%. This contrasts with the growing number of passengers and once again indicates an improved seat load factor, which last month too showed a record. Never before the average number of passengers per flight from Brussels Airport was this high.

Cargo
Cargo traffic continues to recover after the strong decrease in cargo volumes in the first six months of the year. In September, flown cargo volumes are a mere 1.6% below last year's. The last week of September even showed positive growth.

Integrator traffic in September again grew by 8% on last year, while cargo flown on passenger aircraft decreased with over 8% as in previous months. This is mainly due to the lower cargo capacity offered on long-haul passenger flights.

The segment that is recovering at the fastest pace is the full freighter segment, still the most important cargo segment at Brussels Airport. Whereas the decrease recorded earlier this year varied between 12 and 16%, the decrease in September was a mere 3%. As the number of cargo flights remains far below that of last year, the recovery is attributed almost entirely to an improved load factor on the existing routes.

New destinations
Thomas Cook Airlines has announced the opening in 2014 of a new direct service to Split.