Frankfurt air traffic boom
October 11, 2013
On Friday, Fraport announced that some 5.5 million passengers used the Frankfurt hub in September of this year, the highest number recorded for any September in the history of that German airport.
Despite extensive strike action in the same month a year ago, numbers had already soared to a record high in 2012, but this year the airport was used by 191,000 more people, marking a 3.6 percent increase year-on-year.
The number of flights handled at the hub increased by 0.7 percent in September as compared with the same month last year, with a total of 42,525 thousand flights registered in the month under review.
No crisis in sight
Frankfurt airport welcomed a total of 44.2 million passengers in the first nine months of 2013, a slight 0.2-percent increase levels reached in the same period last year.
The Fraport Group said growth had also been strong at the hubs in Lima, Bulgaria and Turkey in which it held a stake. Lima, for instance, was reported to have attracted 11 million passengers in September, marking a 12.2-percent surge year-on-year.
"Our foreign hubs have shown very solid growth for yet another time," Fraport CEO Stefan Schulte said in a statement. "They contribute significantly to our positive overall performance."
The Frankfurt airport is Europe's third-largest aviation hub in terms of passenger numbers, second only to Heathrow in London and Charles de Gaulle in Paris.
hg/kms (dpa, Reuters)