Kutaisi, Batumi Airports among Leaders with Passenger Flow Increase

West Georgia’s Kutaisi and Batumi airports have been listed among the leaders in Europe in terms of passenger flow increase.

Airports Council International (ACI) EUROPE released its traffic report for January 2019, which reads that the passenger flow at Kutaisi airport increased by +112.2% in January 2019 in comparison to the same month of 2018. The flow at Batumi Airport went up by +52.1 % in January 2019 in comparison to the same month of the previous year.

The report reads that average passenger traffic in geographical Europe grew by +4.2% compared to the same month last year.

“This marks a slowdown in the growth dynamic of the past years, with this monthly performance being the lowest achieved by Europe's airports since summer 2016,” ACI Europe reports.

The association added that the slowdown is primarily due to non-EU airports, which reported an average passenger traffic growth of +2.6%, due to the negative performance of Turkish airports (-4.1%)  reflecting the country's economic woes, and that of Icelandic airports (-6%), following 10 years of exponential growth in passenger traffic at Keflavik airport.

“However, gains remained strong in Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Israel, where airports on average achieved double-digit growth, as well as for a number of Russian airports,” reads the report.

By Thea Morrison