Malta International Airport plc reported traffic results for the month and year to date ended October 2012. For the month, passenger movements reached 348,711. The increase in passenger movements, when compared to the same month last year, is equivalent to an increase of 0.6%. Seat capacity in the same month was of 435,542 or 1.2% more than that of October 2011. In October, aircraft movements decreased by 0.6% over the corresponding period last year, whilst the average seat load factor decreased marginally by 0.4 PPD, and stood at 80.1%. The maximum take-off weight (MTOW) increased by 0.6% with a total of 219,445 tonnes, whilst cargo and mail was 26.5% less than that recorded during the same month in 2011.

For the year to date, passenger movements, show an increase of 3.7% when compared to the same period last year, totaling 3,245,545 passenger movements. Once again, this positive result was mainly brought about by the increase in the average seat load factor which stands at 2.4 PPD, and this is more noteworthy when one considers that the number of aircraft movements has more or less remained the same with an increase of 0.2% over the same period last year.

The company updates its forecast for passenger traffic for 2012 from an increase of 1.5% announced in July 2012 to approximately 3%, which means reaching the record of more than 3.6 million passengers.