The month of April has been an exceptionally busy month for lux-Airport. Overall passenger growth was 22% to 214.806 passengers, an increase of 39.144 passengers and the first time in history that over 200.000 passengers were transported in one month so early in the year. Also on the air cargo side of the business the strong growth continued with 13% to 60.333 tons. If these trends continue,the airport is set to break through the barrier of 2,5 million passengers in 2014 and substantially more than 750.000 tons of freight. On the passenger side the growth is partly explained by the Easter holiday period which last year was partly in March but this year was entirely in April. The number of movements however only increased moderately by 7,4%, confirming the trend to towards bigger aircraft.

In absolute passenger numbers, Luxair was the clear winner with 25.694 passengers more than during the same month last year, and delivering a total of 135.494 passengers. This represented an increase of 23%, outstripping the passenger growth of the entire airport. A large portion of this growth was realized by LuxairTours, thanks to the Easter holidays.

The strongest growth percentage-wise came from Easyjet and Turkish Airlines. Easyjet grew by 80% to 15.037 passengers. Turkish Airlines, which only started flying to Luxembourg on 25 June 2013 and which will celebrate its first birthday at the airport next month, increased to 6.147 passengers. At the beginning of April, Turkish Airlines increased its flights from 4 times weekly to a daily flight to Istanbul.

Other champions of growth, almost all in the range of 11.000 passengers, were TAP Air Portugal with 20% to 11.194 passengers, British Airways with 13% to 11.372 passengers, SAS with 13% to 5.366 passengers, Swiss with 9% to 11.707 passengers and KLM with 3% to 11.394 passengers. April 2014 also saw the return of Vueling, the Spanish low cost airline with 3 weekly flights to Barcelona. Vueling transported 1986 passengers.

The strong overall growth in April has increased the year to date growth from 17 % and to a total of 671.322 passengers. Over this period, Luxair grew 15% to 398.007 passengers, Easyjet grew 120% to 52.302 passengers, TAP Air Portugal by 14% to 35.496 passengers, KLM by 11% to 41.462 passengers, SAS grew 7% to 17.253 passengers, British Airways by 5% to 38.995 passengers and Swiss by 5% to 40.308 passengers. Turkish Airlines, for which there are no comparable data for April, transported 16.229 passengers.

On the air cargo side, a total of 234.386 tons of freight were transported year to date, 13% more than the same period last year. Cargolux continued its strong growth which started in the fourth quarter of 2013, and which continues even stronger in 2014. Cargolux increased its freight loads by 14,8% to 49.588 tons. China Airlines grew by 39,6% to 2.642 tons. Qatar Airways transported 1.919 tons on its Boeing 777 freighters.

Johan Vanneste, CEO of lux-Airport, commented: “On a monthly basis this is probably one of the strongest increases in the history of the airport. Aviation is typically a sector which is slightly ahead of the real economy, so this may be a sign that the economy is picking up again. The strong growth in airfreight is also a testimony to this. The timing of the Easter holidays certainly has helped us, however the very strong performance of Luxair, Easyjet and Turkish are quite striking. This proves that the Airport of Luxembourg is very attractive for passengers coming from a very wide catchment area. I am confident that this growth will continue and that more destinations will be added to our network in the future.”

In view of this growth the airport is currently making changes and improvements to its car parkings, and will be adding more capacity in June. A detailed announcement regarding all these improvements will be made in June.