Welcoming 4,824,415 passengers in the reporting month, Frankfurt Airport recorded four percent growth and the busiest June in the airport’s history.Airfreight even jumped by 9.1 percent to 169,122 metric tons. Aircraft movements also climbed by 0.5 percent to 42,380 takeoffs and landings in June 2006.

Accumulated maximum takeoff weights (MTOWs) improved by 0.6 percent over the previous year to 2,420,128 metric tons. Only airmail traffic declined by a slight 0.6 percent to 7,386 metric tons.

Compared to the previous months of the year, June was marked by a noticeable pickup in the forces driving growth. The football World Cup and the statutory June 2006 holidays - which many people used for taking short vacation trips - boosted European traffic in particular (up 7.4 percent). Intercontinental traffic also picked up by 3.6 percent. In addition to the World Cup, an increase in flight services to the Far East stimulated this segment.

In the first two quarters of 2006, some 25,073,614 passengers used the FRA global hub - 1.3 percent more than in the previous 2005 record year. At the beginning of the second quarter the Easter school break led to an increase in demand; from the end of May 2006 the World Cup yielded the expected results. The major growth factor in the first half of the year was European traffic to the North, East, and South European regions.

The airfreight boom seen in the last two years continued unabatedly during the first half of 2006. FRA handled 995,517 metric tons, a 10.6 percent rise in airfreight activity. With 239,666 takeoffs and landings, the number of aircraft movements from January to June 2006 remained nearly unchanged compared to the previous year. In the first two quarters of the year airmail traffic was still affected by the closing of FRA’s overnight domestic airmail hub. Thus, the amount of airmail traffic fell by 4.5 percent to 46,843 metric ton. MTOWs slipped 0.7 percent to 13,642,715 metric tons.

The Fraport Group’s six airports achieved 7.6 percent growth in passenger traffic in June 2006; cargo increased by 8.8 percent and aircraft movements by 2.4 percent in the reporting month. In particular, passenger figures at Antalya Airport (AYT) picked up noticeably with the start of the summer holiday season four weeks ago. Some 669,175 passengers used AYT, up 31.2 percent.

With a total passenger volume of 33,909,037 in the first half of 2006, the Fraport Group nevertheless remained a slight 0.7 percent below the previous year’s level. The main reason was an unfavourable distribution of passenger flows for Fraport at AYT until the end of April 2006. Fraport’s terminal utilization at Antalya Airport has clearly improved since May 2006 so that the Group’s passenger figures are expected to continue rising noticeably in the third quarter.

Most of the Group’s airports experienced positive traffic development in the first half of 2006. At Frankfurt-Hahn Airport (HHN) traffic jumped by 18 percent to 1,688,595 passengers. Hanover Airport (HAJ) saw its traffic rise 4 percent to 2,614,359 passengers, while Lima Airport (LIM) in Peru recorded 2,791,085 passengers, up 4.4 percent. Only Saarbrucken Airport (SCN) registered a decline of 9.3 percent to 183,951 passengers. The Group’s total cargo tonnage climbed by 11.2 percent to 1,240,065 metric tons in the past six months.
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