Passenger numbers hit record high
Nearly one million international travellers used Auckland Airport last December
Close to one million international passengers passed through Auckland Airport last December, a record for the company. A total of 960,681 international passengers (excluding transit passengers) was the highest ever for a single month at the airport, which suffered severe road traffic congestion on some days.
The figure was 67,000 higher than the previous record set in January 2016, and 13.1 per cent higher than December, 2015.
The company said the result was driven by capacity increases on North American and Asian routes, which increased visitor arrivals during the summer, as well as by the number of people visiting friends and relatives during the Christmas-New Year holiday period.
The number of domestic passengers rose by 10.9 per cent or 75,000 passengers, in December 2016 compared with the same month in 2015.
The record 761,581 domestic passengers was largely due to the increased number of regional services, which accounted for almost half the month’s growth.
Jetstar has now been flying its regional services for a year and the airport said Air New Zealand’s strong domestic growth was driven by a 10 per cent capacity increase on jet services, including a more than 30 per cent increase on the popular Auckland-Queenstown route.
For the year ending December 31 9.3 million international passengers (excluding transit passengers) used the airport, a 10.4 per cent increase on the previous 12 months.
This was primarily due to additional capacity on flights from the United States, the Middle East, Japan, China, Thailand and Australia, and as a result of nine new airlines launching Auckland services in the past 18 months.
A daily international pas- senger record was achieved at Auckland Airport on Friday, December 23, with 36,403 passengers travelling through the international terminal. Last December international passengers averaged 30,990 per day, an average increase of 3600 a day on the same month the previous year.
The airport has come under pressure for not investing in infrastructure to cope with the high number of travellers.
Following Herald stories the company and Auckland Transport set up a task force to implement immediate measures to cope with the heavy traffic travelling to and from the airport.
Users have complained that the tight roading system and increasing numbers of workers in the airport area had aggravated the problem.
Figures released on Tuesday showed New Zealand was just 61 visitors away from reaching the milestone of 3.5 million international visitors last year.