Brussels Airport welcomed a record number of passengers for the month of March this year, said the airport Wednesday, which also recorded its best first quarter in terms of attendance. Some 1,879,510 passengers went through Zaventem last month, up 9.8% from the previous record for the month in March in 2015.
Freight transport also recorded strong growth in March, reaching more than 50,000 tons, up 15.3% from 2015.
For the first quarter as a whole and compared with the previous record in 2015, the airport received 10.6% more passengers. Over the same period, freight transport increased by 13.3% compared to 2015.
In March 2016, the airport was closed as of 22 March following the attacks, he said. "A comparison of the number of passengers in 2016 and 2017 would thus give a distorted picture of reality, which is why the comparison is made with the figures of 2015, a record year for Brussels Airport", it explained.
This strong increase shows, as in the previous four months, that the confidence of passengers with regard to Brussels Airport has returned to its highest level, commented the airport.
The number of local departures (+11.2%) grew more rapidly in March 2017 compared with the number of passengers in transit (+7.7%) with respect to March 2015. This is due to the fact that, in that year, Jet Airways was still operating from Brussels Airport and was responsible for some of the passengers in transit.
Brussels Airlines and Ryanair reported the most growth, which is also at the level of European short-haul flights and long distance flights, in particular with ANA to Tokyo, despite the disappearance of the long-distance flights of Jet Airways from Brussels, Brussels Airport explained further. Delta Airlines has since resumed flights to Atlanta.
The Brussels Times
