Helsinki Airport in Finland has set a new passenger record after it catered for more than 16 million travelers in 2015. The increase over the previous figures almost amounts to the entire population of Helsinki. Finnish airport operator Finavia also catered for more than 20 million passengers across all its airports for the first time in its history.
A total of 20,083,297 passengers traveled through Finavia’s airports in 2015, an increase of 2% compared with the previous year. Of theses passengers, 26% took domestic flights and 74% boarded international flights.
The annual passenger volume at Helsinki Airport reached 16,422,266 for 2015, a 3% or 473,428 passenger increase over 2014. The volume of international passengers increased by 2.9%, and domestic travel grew by 3.4%.
Joni Sundelin, director at Finavia, said, “The demand for air traffic is still continuing to increase rapidly, which can be seen in the record-breaking passenger volumes. We believe that the good growth in transit traffic between Europe and Asia will also continue next year. Signing a partnership agreement with the biggest Asian airport was a significant step for us in strengthening our position. The appeal of Lapland as a tourist destination also shows in the air traffic figures.”
The number of commercial aviation landings continued to decrease to 113,290 operations last year, which is 1.7% less than in 2014. The passenger volume has not decreased in proportion to the number of landed aircraft, which means that air traffic is more efficient due to high aircraft occupancy rates and larger aircraft sizes.
