Record number of passengers through Edinburgh Airport this October

A total of 1,322,402 people passed through Edinburgh Airport last month as the airport landed yet another record month.

Number are up almost 8% on the same month last year and October is the strongest month in terms of year on year growth in 2018.

International growth was up 9.5% while domestic growth also increased by 5.2%.

Gordon Dewar, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Airport said: “It’s been another busy month for Edinburgh Airport and it means we’ve delivered more than 1.3 million passengers for six consecutive months for the first time, which highlights our fantastic growth.

“It shows Scotland’s continued attractiveness to visitors all year round as well as the number of people taking advantage of the array of destinations we serve from Scotland’s busiest airport, including a strong performance in our new Dubai route with Emirates. We’re looking build on recent route announcements to places like Philadelphia, Boston and Riga and deliver even more destination choice for our passengers.”

Domestic market was ahead of last year (+5.2%) due to the following reasons:

• Flybe, Loganair, British Airways and Ryanair are flying fuller planes than last year
• Flybe serving more frequencies across several routes
• easyJet serving more frequencies to Belfast

International market recorded a 9.5% YoY growth due to 21 new routes launched since last October. These are the reasons for the strong growth in more detail:

• Ryanair operated 10 routes this October that weren’t operated this time last year. The routes launched in the last 12 months are: Hamburg, Szczecin, Seville, Tallinn, Berlin Schoenefeld, Stockholm Skavsta, Lisbon, Memmingen, Derry and Sofia
• Jet2 are flying a bigger & fuller aircraft on more destinations, and since last October introduced 4 new destinations: Antalya, Dalaman, Kos & Funchal
• easyJet are using a bigger plane than last year. Flights to Venice and Alicante have more frequencies than last year. easyJet launched 2 new routes in the last 12 months: Jersey and Seville.
• Air France are using a larger plane than last year
• Airlines serving transatlantic routes are filling up their planes more than last year, showing a strong demand for this market
• We launched a new service to Beijing with Hainan Airlines
• We launched a new daily service to Dubai with Emirates

Popular destinations (among others) in October were:

• Poland: Poznan, Gdansk, Wroclaw, Warsaw, Katowice, Krakow
• Central and Eastern Europe: Kaunas, Sofia, Bratislava, Prague and Budapest
• Canary Islands
• Other holiday destinations: Antalya, Madeira & Paphos (Cyprus)

Compared to October 2017 we served 22 new routes this October of which 21 are international routes and additional 1 domestic route.