Glasgow’s best-ever July beats all previous passenger number records

International traffic grew by 10.1% with long-haul routes including Emirates’ daily double to Dubai, Delta Air Line’s New York-JFK flight and Virgin Atlantic’s direct Orlando service reporting particularly strong demand.

EU-scheduled services were up 14% thanks to additional capacity on a number of routes including Alicante, Palma and Dusseldorf, while city-break destinations such as Berlin, Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Madrid and Paris also proved popular.

July saw thousands of travellers take to the skies bound for a number of European sun destinations including the Canary Islands, Ibiza, Faro, Greece, Croatia and the Costa del Sol. The airport also recorded its busiest day of the year so far on Friday, July 14, as 40,000 passengers passed through the terminal.

The release of July’s passenger figures follows news that Glasgow was named one of the top six UK airports in the Civil Aviation Authority’s Airport Accessibility Report. Glasgow scored a ‘Very Good’ rating for its Person of Restricted Mobility provision at the airport. 

Amanda McMillan, managing director of Glasgow Airport, said: “July is traditionally our busiest period of the year as passengers head off on their summer holidays, but to record our busiest ever month in 51 years of operation is a significant achievement.

“We’ve set new passenger-number records in each month so far this year and our strong performance in 2017 is a result of our continued efforts to offer customers more choice through extra seats to popular routes and new destinations such as the new twice-weekly Ryanair service to Zadar launched last month.  

“August is already proving busy thanks to large-scale events such as the return this week of the Piping Live festival and the World Pipe Band Championships. Both events are incredibly popular and will see the airport welcome thousands of visitors and participating musician from across the globe.

“We also expect the BWF World Championships to attract thousands of badminton fans when the tournament gets underway later this month.

“Looking ahead, Ryanair will introduce a number of new winter services in September and October to Frankfurt, Krakow and Madrid, while Lufthansa will also increase the current Munich service from one flight per week to four, ensuring we enter the second half of the year in a position of strength.”