OREANDA-NEWS. January 23, 2015. With close to 40 million travellers arriving and departing, Munich Airport had yet another record year in 2014. Passenger traffic increased by nearly 3 percent to 39.7 million – one million more than in the previous year.

The dynamic growth in traffic resulted above all from strong gains in the second half of 2014, when passenger volume was actually up 4 percent over the same period a year earlier. The new record also represents something of a statistical milestone for Munich Airport, namely the 20th all-time high for total passengers posted in the airport's 22-year history at its new location: "With these results, Munich Airport continues to ensure the success of Bavaria and will continue to have a major impact on the Bavarian economy and tourism," said Dr. Michael Kerkloh, the CEO of FMG, the airport's operating company.

The strong passenger figures also resulted once again in an increase in the average load factor in Munich, which rose to a new all-time high of 75.9 percent. This means that, in 2014, more than three quarters of all seats offered at Munich Airport were booked. A total of about 377,000 take-offs and landings took place in 2014: a decrease of 1.4 percent from the previous year.

The airfreight segment also reported new records: The total volume of cargo increased by 8 percent to a record level of over 291,000 tons. When airmail is included, the cargo volume handled in Munich actually exceeded 309,000 tons.

Airport CEO Kerkloh sees the continuing strong traffic results at Bavaria's gateway to the world as grounds for optimism: "In 2015 we will not only vault over the 40 million barrier for total passengers, but will also record more take-offs and landings. That means that our Munich hub will continue growing, even if that growth is limited due to capacity constraints in our runway system."

Again in 2014, Munich Airport felt the effects of the transition of various airlines to larger aircraft: The average departure weight of the planes increased to 82.5 tons. The number of seats offered on flights to and from Munich rose by about 2 percent to over 52.3 million.

The increase in passenger numbers in Munich in 2014 resulted entirely from gains in international traffic. The strongest growth was seen in the intercontinental segment, where traffic increased by 7 percent to 6.2 million passengers on the strength of excellent results on the new long-haul connections to Houston, Mexico and Shanghai and additional flights to Abu Dhabi.

The continental segment remained by far the largest traffic segment at Munich Airport: the number of passengers travelling on routes within Europe was up nearly 3 percent to more than 24 million, with strong gains seen in particular on routes to Spain, Italy and Greece. By contrast, traffic on routes within Germany remained unchanged as compared with the previous year (9.3 million passengers).