The fast growth of Luxembourg Airport continued in 2015; almost 2.7 million passengers used the airport in 2015, which represents 8.83% growth (218,000 new passengers) compared to 2014 when 2.47 million passengers used the airport; the 2016 growth is budgeted at 6%.
The growth rate exceeded the expectations of lux-Airport, which had budgeted 8% growth for the year. A very strong summer and strong double-digit growth in the last four months pushed the year-end total to 2.69 million passengers. This represents a growth of 22.3% in 2 years and 50% over the past 5 years.
Luxair remains the largest customer of the airport with 1.69 million passengers or 62.9% market share. 45% of the 218,000 new passengers were transported by Luxair. Thanks in particular to a wide use of larger aircraft (Boeing 737-800) on Rome, Nice, Madrid, Munich, Barcelona and increase of frequencies on London City, Hamburg, Stockholm and Dublin, Luxair saw a growth of 7.75% in 2015. Luxair also took delivery of a new Boeing 737-800 in February 2015 and is gradually replacing its fleet of Embraer 145 by additional Bombardier Q400s.
The second largest customer of lux-Airport remains Easyjet, which saw its passenger numbers increase by 17.3% to almost 200,000. Easyjet introduced a new destination in June, Porto, initially operated 3 times weekly, and increased to 5 times weekly from November onwards.
In third place is KLM with 148,000 passengers or +9.7%. During the year KLM increasingly replaced its older Fokker 70 with the modern Embraer 190 aircraft on the 3 to 4 times daily route to Amsterdam. KLM was very closely followed by British Airways in 4th position with 146,000 passengers or +9.9% using its 2 daily flights to London Heathrow.
Swiss, in 5th position, transported 125,000 passengers on its flights to Zurich. TAP Portugal welcomed 121,000 passengers on its flights to Lisbon and Porto, a growth of 6.1%.
Lufthansa saw the strongest growth of the year with 79.1% to 95,000 passengers. In November, Lufthansa started 4 daily flights to Frankfurt, replacing Luxair on this route, and added 2 frequencies on Munich to a total of 4 daily flights. These new flights saw Lufthansa’s passenger numbers grow over 300% in November and December.
Turkish Airlines continued its strong growth of the past 2 years with 16.5% to 75,000 passengers. Turkish increased capacity on the route to Istanbul by using its latest-generation Boeing 737-800 aircraft. Spanish low-cost airline Vueling also noted a very nice growth of 18.7% to almost 21,000 passengers and Turkish newcomer Sun Express transported more than 7,000 passengers to Antalya.
For 2016 lux-Airport expects to welcome about 2.85 million passengers, an increase of 6%. Three new airlines were announced at the end of 2015: Greek airline Aegean will start 2 flights a week to Athens, French airline Hop! will start daily flights to Lyon with perfect connections to the rest of France in particular, and Polish airline LOT will start daily flights to Warsaw with onward connections to Eastern Europe. Luxair will open not less than four new destinations: Prague, Almeria, Zadar and Chania.
From the end of February to mid-April, Luxembourg Airport will also temporarily welcome some customers of Metz-Nancy Airport, recently renamed to Lorraine Airport which will be closed during this period due to renovation works to its runway. During this period lux-Airport expects to welcome Air Algerie (flights to Algiers), Hop! (3 daily flights to Lyon) and Jetairfly (flights to Casablanca, Marrakech and Lanzarote). Other holiday flights to Rhodes, Olbia, Djerba, Heraklion, Palerme, Marrakech and Lanzarote are also likely to be redirected from Lorraine Airport to Luxembourg Airport during this period.
