Abu Dhabi airport passengers up 15%

Abu Dhabi International Airport on Saturday said year-on-year passenger traffic rose 14.9 per cent in May.

In a statement, it said 1,877,440 passengers passed through the airport in May while nearly 15,000 aircraft movements recorded during the month.

The published figures also included the number of passengers to and from Italy, which have grown by 166.5 per cent compared to May 2014 to over 50,000 passengers, as Alitalia's newly-opened routes to Milan and Venice started to take effect.

In addition, passengers flying to and from the United States also registered similar increase with more than 106,000 passengers last month, translating into 49 per cent growth in traffic compared with May 2014.

In terms of passenger numbers, India topped the list in May with over 305,000 passengers, up by 58.6 per cent from the same period last year.

Cargo traffic also showed healthy growth with a 9.8 per cent increase in overall tonnage to 73,476 compared to 66,944 in May last year.

Eng Ahmad Al Haddabi, chief operations officer at Abu Dhabi Airports, said: "May was an excellent month for us, and we continue to see strong growth across all key sectors with both passenger and cargo facilities running smoothly. The ability to handle increases in traffic on this scale, month after month, is a testament to the efforts and experience of our operations team, as well as a clear indication of our national carrier Etihad's strong continued growth. With this trend forecast to continue, we remain committed to maintaining and improving levels of customer service, in order to ensure an outstanding experience for passengers at Abu Dhabi International Airport.”

In May 2015, the top five destinations from Abu Dhabi International Airport were Mumbai, Manila, London Heathrow, Doha and Bangkok. These accounted for 16 per cent of all traffic.

Currently under way is the multi-billion dollar re-development and expansion of Abu Dhabi International Airport designed to increase the overall capacity of the airport to more than 40 million passengers per year.