Record figures at Brussels Airport: over 2 million passengers in July 2011

Passengers

With 2,033,101 passengers travelling through the airport in July, Brussels Airport recorded its highest monthly traffic since 2001. The continuing passenger growth (9,3% in July) is supported by both the intra-European and intercontinental traffic. Transfer and transit traffic even recorded a 29.8% growth over July 2010.

These strong results are mostly explained by Brussels Airlines’ and Star Alliance’ strong hub development at Brussels Airport, as well as a remarkable return of holiday traffic after the weakened economical situation of the past two years.

Cargo

In spite of the strong passenger growth, freight traffic declines with 5.9 percent. This reduced growth reflects the global current evolution in air freight traffic, with the exception of Integrator traffic (DHL) that performs strongly.

Aircraft movements

In July Brussels Airport registered almost 21,000 movements, up 1% on the same month last year. This modest growth in comparison with the strong passenger growth results from better seat load factors and the use of larger aircraft types on average.

New services

As of September 2011 Brussels Airlines adds a two weekly service to Bamako (via Accra) to its network. Jetairfly announces new weekly destinations Santo Domingo and Bangkok/Phuket as from November. Thai Airways International also announced the startup of 3/week direct Brussels-Bangkok operations in November. Air Arabia announce the increase of low cost flights to their current destinations of Nador, Fez and Casablanca from 3 to 8, adding the new route of Tangiers to their Brussels Airport network during the next winter. Air France announced the startup of a new route to Nantes and Bordeaux with 11 weekly flights as from 2 October.

Korean Air added a fourth and a fifth weekly cargo flight to Seoul. During the winter season the frequency will be gradually increased to nine flights a week.