Malta International Airport Expects to Welcome 5.4 Million Tourist This Year
In this regard, the General Director of the Ministry of Interior, Alan Borg, has said that regardless of the challenges the aviation industry faces, the company expects that it will be connected through 83 lines in the winter season, AtoZSerwisPlus.mt reports.
According to Borg, the company welcomed 2.3 million passengers in the first half of 2022. He also added that performance in the second quarter recovered well, balancing the slow start to the year.
“Malta International Airport expects to end the year with 5.4 million passengers, which is comparable to the traffic the airport had handled in 2016 and 2017,” Borg pointed out.
Borg also explains that preliminary work on the Apron X project will begin mid-August as the company continues its investment program. The project in question will develop approximately 100,000 m2 of land to accommodate new aircraft parking stands, a taxiway, an area for ground handling operations, and a reservoir.
In addition, during the winter season, the MIA expects to be connected through 83 lines, thus marking a recovery of about 80 per cent of the airport’s connections before the pandemic. However, these two lines will return this winter after they were interrupted for the season at the beginning of the pandemic, which are Skopje in North Macedonia and Cluj in Romania; at the same time, both will be operated by Wizz Air.
Commenting on the steady increase in connectivity post-pandemic, Malta Tourism Authority CEO Carlo Micallef said this has resulted in Malta being directly accessible by an increasing number of routes and with increasing frequency.
“This has had a direct impact on tourism numbers which are increasing in direct response to airline capacity being floated. The MTA will continue working to attract increasing tourism numbers to achieve the recovery of the sector by tapping into new and emerging geographical markets and by targeting a wide range of motivational interests in line with the destination’s multifaceted attractions,” Micallef also noted.
Previously, the European Commission supported Malta International Airport by allocating an aid measure of 12 million in the context of COVID-19.
The EU Commission stated that the measure was aimed at compensating the airport operator for the damage suffered during the period from March 21 to June 30, 2021, due to the restrictions imposed by Malta for the spread of the virus.
