By Tuba Sahin
ANKARA (AA) - Air passenger traffic in Europe rose 7.4 percent year-on-year in January, an airport authority said on Monday.
"As in previous months, the non-EU market led the growth dynamic at 14.6 percent, on the back of Turkish airports increasing their passenger traffic by an impressive 28.1 percent," Airports Council International (ACI) Europe said in a statement.
It added that during the same period passenger traffic in Russian airports rose at a slower pace than Turkey, with 7.7 percent.
Air passenger traffic in the EU was also on the rise with 5.2 percent in January 2018, compared to the same month last year.
This rise stemmed from the fallout of Air Berlin and Monarch's bankruptcies fading away along with Ryanair's decision to take 25 aircraft out of its fleet this winter, ACI Europe said.
"The fact that January 2017 had seen a very strong increase -- 10 percent -- also contributed to the lower performance," it said.
ACI Europe said that passenger traffic in the top five European airports grew 9.3 percent thanks to the rise at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.
"This performance was primarily influenced by a +30.3% increase at Istanbul Ataturk, which propelled the airport to the second position amongst the league, behind London-Heathrow (+1.1 percent) and just above Paris-CDG (+4.9 percent).”
Amsterdam-Schiphol and Frankfurt also contributed to the performance by boosting their passenger traffic 7.6 percent.
ACI Europe also revealed that freight traffic kept its upward trend, rising 8.4 percent year-on-year in the month.
The ACI Europe airport traffic report includes 241 airports in total, representing more than 88 percent of European air passenger traffic.