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Edinburgh records 'busiest ever month for a Scottish airport'



More than a million overseas visitors came through Edinburgh Airport as it recorded the busiest ever month for a Scottish airport.

A total of 1,508,586 passengers passed through in July and while the numbers are up 0.4% on the same month last year, growth is down from 6.3% from July 2018.

Gordon Dewar, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Airport, said: “It’s a bittersweet month for us – we’ve just recorded the busiest ever month for a Scottish airport for the second time, but it comes as we see a marked slowdown in growth.

 

“The fall in domestic travel has clearly had an impact and although there is growth internationally we cannot ignore the loss of routes over the past year, such as Norwegian pulling their transatlantic services.

“We previously warned that failure to cut the highest aviation tax in the world have an adverse effect on growth and this appears to be coming to fruition. Our industry hears the government’s concerns around the climate but the positive steps taken towards making aviation more sustainable have not been considered.

“Like all businesses, we are looking at how we make our operations more sustainable and how we can influence the wider industry to continue on that positive path.The airport campus employs around 7,000 people and as a business overall we support 23,000 jobs across Scotland – we have to find a way that delivers sustainable growth to ensure continued success for our economy.”

 

Domestic market was behind -4.7% vs July 2018 due to the following reasons:

  • Ryanair cut Stansted frequencies from 4 per day to 4 per week
  • Increased number of flight cancellations due to adverse weather conditions and resulting ATC issues at other UK airports

This negative impact was partially softened by strong performance on other domestic routes:

  • Flybe added more frequencies to London Heathrow (from 4 daily to 6 daily)
  • Loganair started new routes to Guernsey (May 19) and Islay (Mar 19)
  • Ryanair started a new route to Derry (Nov 18)

International market recorded a +3.0% YoY growth due new route growth and a positive trend on long-haul routes.



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