BUSINESS tourism, more full planes and new routes have helped Edinburgh Airport to a record month in September.
A raft of events at the Edinburgh international Conference Centre including the Social Enterprise World Forum that attracted thousands to the city were cited as one of the reasons behind the uplift.
The airport said main factors included the stronger domestic market, up on last year by two per cent with Flybe and Loganair, who last year ended a partnership that left them in direct competition on some routes, flying fuller planes.
The key international market recorded a 7.8% year on year growth, mostly down to 21 new routes launched since last September.As well as the Social Enterprise World Forum on September 12-14, the EICC also hosted Cochrane Colloquium, the World Youth and Student Travel Conference, the Eunethydis International Conference on ADHD and European Association for Haematopathology.
A total of 1.4m people passed through Edinburgh Airport last month making it the busiest September.
That number is 5.8% up on the same month last year and follows a record August when almost 1.47m passengers passed through the terminal, an increase of 4.9% on last year and the second busiest month recorded at the airport.
The busiest month on record was July 2018 when the 1.5m passenger barrier was broken for the first time by a Scottish airport.
An Edinburgh airport spokesman said: "We obviously hope growth will continue and we’re always looking to secure new routes and destinations to offer that choice to passengers.
"The strong festival season helps as well as we’ll have people who stay for a little bit longer into September while there’s an element of business tourism as well due to the number of conferences the city has hosted recently.
"People within that sector will be flying in from all over the world to attend and that helps our numbers."
- Read more: Airport record as passengers top 1.5 million
New destination additions included Ryanair operating 12 routes this September including to France, Germany and Poland that weren’t operated this time last year.
Jet2 are flying more bigger and fuller aircraft on more destinations, and since last September introduced four new destinations, while easyJet and Air France are also using larger aircraft.
Airlines serving transatlantic routes are also bringing more people than last year "showing a strong demand for this market" and there is also a new service to Beijing with Hainan Airlines.
While Flybe was said to have had more passengers, the airline accused Edinburgh of being too focused on large planes operating long-haul routes in an article in the Scotland on Sunday.
Flybe chief executive Christine Ourmières-Widener claiming "there have been more delays in Edinburgh than we were expecting", while and Edinburgh Airport spokesman was reported as saying it has "a strong relationship with all of our carriers and display parity and equity to all of them".
Gordon Dewar, chief executive of Edinburgh Airport, said that the September result meant "another impressive month for all of us".
- Read more: SNP tax cut for air passengers in doubt
But he said: “While this growth is helpful, we can’t escape the fact that Scotland is well below European average growth.
"We’re also seeing airlines announcing reductions and cuts to services due to us having the highest aviation tax in the world, something which is holding back the industry’s true potential.
"With the further challenge of an uncertain Brexit looming, the promised APD reduction needs to be delivered to avoid a stall in aviation and tourism growth.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here