Munich Airport posts record-breaking quarterly results

To start the year, the growth rate at Munich Airport yet again kicked into a higher gear. For the first time in its history, the airport topped the 8 million passenger mark in the first three months of a calendar year, with the total number up 12 percent over the same period a year earlier. In its busiest March ever, the airport handled nearly 3 million passengers. Sharp increases were also seen in total aircraft movements. At just under 97,000 flights, the number of take-offs and landings in Munich in the first quarter was approximately 10 percent higher than in 2010.

The strong surge in air traffic carried over to the global movement of cargo as well: Munich Airport handled almost 70,000 tons of flown airfreight and airmail in the first three months of the year – an increase of 21 percent in cargo as compared with the same period last year. March 2011 actually produced a new record-breaking traffic figure: With a total of nearly 27,000 tons of airfreight, the airport handled more cargo in a single one-month period than ever before.

Increases in the passenger traffic at Munich Airport in the long-haul and European traffic segments were higher than the overall average gains, with the number of long-haul passengers up by 13.2 percent, and flights to and from European cities actually carrying 13.7 percent more passengers. The domestic traffic segment, i.e. travel within Germany, recorded growth of nearly 7 percent in the first quarter.

In the booming intercontinental segment, North and South American routes are particularly popular at present, with more than 100 departures per week in the first quarter. Nearly 540,000 passengers crossed the Atlantic to travel to and from Munich. This represents a 19 percent increase over the previous year. Services offered to Asian destinations continued their strong performance, with an overall 10 percent traffic increase in Munich.

Munich Airport also bolstered its claim to the title of “Italy’s most northerly airport”: As the second-largest passenger market, ranking behind only domestic traffic within Germany, Italy achieved 20 percent growth in the first quarter. A total of 540,000 passengers traveled between the Bavarian hub and the 17 available Italian destinations.

Detailed traffic figures for the first three months