Last April almost 514,000 passengers used Malta International Airport. This was almost twelve times the passenger traffic observed a year ago in the same month. It also marked the highest number of passengers who used our airport since October 2019, that is well before the pandemic struck us.

Compared to the pre-pandemic level of passenger traffic, airport activity for this month was at 79%. This when in April last year passenger traffic accounted for only 6% of pre-pandemic activity.

In terms of pre-pandemic activity, this April’s ratio was the best movement of passengers at the airport since the start of the pandemic. The previous record had been March when the percentage of passengers had amounted to 66% of that in 2019.

This shows that the negative impact brought about by Omicron has dissipated. So much so that the number of passengers who passed through our country’s airport during April was greater than that last August – the traditional peak month. Airport traffic appears to be back to nearly what it had been in the same month in 2017.

With the removal of further travel restrictions, in the coming months the tourism sector is expected to continue to rebound. In addition, National Statistics Office data are repeatedly showing that the average length of tourist stays as well as their per capita expenditure are going up substantially. This means that even with fewer tourists our country is having a much better economic return than it was used to.

In the first three months of the year almost 1.2 million passengers used the airport. This is nearly nine times better than the less than 138,000 passengers observed in the same period of 2021. If these trends continue, 2022 will be turn out to be much better than the previous two years.