Airport travellers hit an all-time high

THE number of passengers using Edinburgh Airport broke the 1.5million mark for the first time last month.

The capital’s airport recorded its busiest ever month and airport chiefs said it is the first time a Scottish airport has broken the 1.5million passenger barrier, with new routes helping drive the increase.

Twenty five routes have been launched since last July, while some airlines are flying bigger aircraft.

The total of 1,501,988 passengers is a .3 per cent increase on the same month last year.

Gordon Dewar, Edinburgh Airport chief executive, said: ‘These are fantastic figures for the airport, for Edinburgh and for Scotland, and they show an increase in passenger demand of 0 per cent over five years – that is phenomenal growth and easily makes us one of Europe’s fasting growing airports.’

In July, 498, 99 domestic passengers used the airport, a 4.3 per cent increase on the same month in 2017.

This was driven by Flybe flying more passengers compared to last year and easyJet launching a route to Jersey and operating more flights to Bristol than last July.

The airport handled 1,003,289 international passengers, 7.3 per cent up on last year following the launch of 24 routes including flights to destinations such as Beijing, Tel Aviv, Budapest, Carcassonne and Eindhoven.