Malta International Airport expects to host some 4.4 million passengers this year, forecasting a two per cent growth over last year which was a record year for the airport.

The growth is the result of further capacity being deployed to Malta from operating airlines and also due to a number of new airlines and routes which have already been announced, including Aegean, Finnair, Jet2.com and Swiss.

Last year saw 4,290,304 million passengers, an increase of 6.4 per cent from 2013 which had seen just over four million passengers by the end of the year. There was also an increase in aircraft movements by 4.8 per cent, resulting in an equal increase in seat capacity.

Besides an increase in available flights and seats to and from Malta, the airlines flying through the airport also succeeded in increasing the seat load factor, meaning that aircraft were on average fuller than in 2013, from 78.5 per cent to 79.7 per cent. Meanwhile, cargo and mail dropped by 3.1 per cent, from 16,038 tonnes to 15,547 tonnes.

Last year, the airport saw unprecedented passenger numbers from its four major markets, with significant growth registered for the UK (6.1 per cent), Italy (12.1 per cent), Germany (3.2 per cent) and France (17 per cent).

There was a large drop of 25.8 per cent in traffic from Spain, the fifth largest market, due to weakening demand in Spanish outbound leisure tourism which resulted in a significant seat capacity drop.

“It has been a great year for Malta International Airport and the tourism industry. The record growth every month this year, shows that the island’s strategy to attract more traffic in the shoulder months is reaping results,” ad interim CEO Alan Borg said.

He added that the numbers, both last year and this year, were all the more significant considering the closure of Libya and the tensions in Russia

He also praised Air Malta for mitigating these impacts by successfully redeploying their capacity and recovering most of the affected traffic.

“We remain focused on increasing traffic during the winter months and attracting more visitors from new markets to our islands. We are looking forward to another positive year with a steady 2% growth for 2015.”

Mr Borg thanked the government, the Ministry for Tourism, the Malta Tourism Authority and all other stakeholders for working together, saying he looked forward to a continued cooperation in the future.

Throughout this year, MIA has €4 million worth of investments planned, most of which are underway.

These include improvements to the runway, apron and taxiway (€950,000), expansion of the terminal building in the non-Schengen arrivals section (€2 million), a new emergency operations centre (€100,000), a re-organisation of the high voltage network (€520,000) and investment in back-up standby power generators (€450,000).