Slightly less than five million passengers travelled to and from or via Avinor’s airports in October – an increase of 2.2 per cent compared to the same month last year.
At Norway’s main airport, Oslo Airport, growth was 2.3 per cent, and 2.5 million passengers passed through the airport in October. Avinor’s regional airports also experienced growth of 2.3 per cent in the month with a total of 981,000 passengers.
Avinor vice president of traffic development, Jasper Spruit said: “It is foreigners coming to Norway who are contributing to the growth in traffic. This is good news for Norwegian tourism.
“Compared to last year, in the period from January to September this year, there has been 13 per cent more foreigners flying to and from Norway. The number of Norwegian passengers has decreased by 3 per cent in the same period.”
He added: “Growth has been moderate in October, where Oslo Airport and the largest regional airports are making the greatest contributions. Bergen and Stavanger have somewhat lower growth in terms of percentages than the overall Avinor figure, and in Trondheim growth was 1.2 per cent.”
Traffic to and from Germany increased by 29 per cent in October, and there are also substantial increases to countries such as Turkey (17 per cent), France (10 per cent) and Poland (nine per cent).
“The start of the EasyJet route between Oslo Airport and Berlin made a strong contribution to this increase, and we also have more passengers to Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich. Norwegian, Lufthansa and Widerøe have also seen good growth on routes to Germany,” Spruit said.
“It’s also good to see that the positive trend to Turkey continues, after a few years with a downward trend. This gives added value creation for Norwegian travel agents offering trips abroad.”
Avinor said Air France is responsible for the strong increase to France, and it is especially travel to and from Norway and Paris that is on the increase as 6,000 more passengers travelled between Bergen and Paris and 5,000 more between Oslo and Paris in October this year. To Poland it is particularly trips to and from Warsaw, but growth to Gdansk is also making up the numbers.
