Lyon-St Exupery Airport surpassed 9 million annual passengers for the first time in early December last year.
The airport’s total footfall for 2016 reached 9,553,250 passengers, up 9.8% on the previous year. This was due to a 12.5% increase in international traffic, accounting for 66.5% of total traffic. Every served continent saw a hike in popularity thanks to the introduction of 20 new routes, including Air Canada-operated Montreal, and Moscow via Aeroflot.
Domestic traffic was also on the up, with a 5.2% rise driven by the popularity of destinations such as Bordeaux, Nantes, Nice and Toulouse.
Air freight experienced a double-digit growth for a fifth consecutive year, up 11.8% compared with 2015 with 59,407 tons of goods transported. A key reason for the growth was the start of a weekly cargo flight operated by Air Algerie from November, complementing the cargo flights already operated by Emirates.
Despite large increases in both freight and passenger traffic, the airport’s environmental impact remained controlled with just a 1.8% increase in the number of plane movements.
Story by Kirstie Pickering
