Lyon-Saint Exupéry: Impressive traffic growth in June

Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport had good figures in June despite French air traffic controllers going on strike on 24^th and 25^th June. The airport recorded a growth of +3.3%, compared with June 2013, welcoming a total of 799,658 passengers. The summer is certainly off to a promising start!

After declining for 4 months, passenger traffic picked up for the majority of operators at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport. It remained stable in May, compared with May 2013 (+0%) and rose +3.3% in June. Thus, the airport partly absorbed lost traffic that had accumulated since January, down just -1.1 % compared with the first semester in 2013 (4,117,211 passengers in 2014). International air travel consequently accounts for 62.9% of total air traffic with an increase of 1.5%, compared with June 2013 (-0.4% in total compared with 2013). Nationally, an increase of +7.4% was recorded, boosted by traffic into Parisian airports (+25.2 %). Regional airport traffic increased by +3.9 % but did not manage to make up for aggregated losses since January (-5.1%).

Looking at the performance of airlines, easyJet’s traffic grew by +10.8% in the month, compared with June 2013. The Air France group compensated for its reduction in traffic (-5.7 %), thanks to good results from Transavia.com (+89.6 % in June), which notably benefitted from new routes to Athens, Porto and Funchal, as well as from Hop, which remained stable, up +0.3% over the same period. Vueling has not been left behind, as traffic increased by +32.1%, boosted by its two new routes to Malaga and Seville. The same was true for Brussels Airlines (+ 36.1 %), which increased its seat provision by 10%.

In terms of destinations, there was an improvement in passenger traffic to Belgium and, in particular, Brussels, for which there was a growth of +25.1 % shared between point to point flights and connecting flights to USA, India and Africa. Portugal and Greece respectively saw a +15% increase, while Italy and Turkey both came close to a +10% increase. It is worth highlighting that Tunisian destinations enjoyed renewed success, with their traffic increasing by +10.6%, while Morocco was still affected by the Arab Spring, with its passenger traffic dropping -5.6%. Algeria continued its development, up +7.5%. Dubai, as a final destination and major stopover for flights to Australia, South-East Asia and China performed at +23%, while Emirates is still waiting on authorization to add 2 additional flights to the 5 it currently operates.

With regards to segment, low cost flights increased at an incredible pace, up +16.3%; presently account for 26% of Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport’s total passenger traffic. Regular traffic, outside the low cost segment, grew by +0.8%, representing a total of 534,859 passengers.

Freight

Again keeping in line with a significant trend, the quantity of air freight transported, excluding post, increased +21.9 % in June 2014, compared with June 2013, with 3,908.8 tons transported.