Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern Airports grew over 8% in the first half of 2015

Published on : Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Airports in the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East maintained steady growth in June 2015, reporting year over year gains at +4.9% and +6.1% respectively. Despite slowdown in regional trade activities, international travel remained resilient. For the first half of 2015, both regions recorded cumulative passenger traffic increase of +8.3% and +8.8% respectively.

A number of major airports in the Asia-Pacific generated year-on-year growth in excess of 15% in 1H 2015: Shanghai Pudong (PVG) +18.5%, Bangkok (BKK) +18.5%, Mumbai (BOM) +17.8%, and Kunming (KMG) +20.2%. Bangkok Don Muang (DMK) continued to generate the highest increase among major airports at +50.3%.

Air freight continued to be impacted by slowdown across Asian export markets. In June 2015, Asia-Pacific recorded a decrease of -0.2% and the Middle East maintained growth at +4.5% from the same period last year. From January to June this year, Asia-Pacific generated cumulative growth of +3% with New Delhi (DEL) achieving the highest growth rate at +12.2%. The Middle East grew at +8.6% year-to-date, and its largest freight hub Dubai (DXB) recorded increase of +2.8%.

Looking ahead towards the second half of 2015, passenger traffic is likely to maintain a solid track with support from leisure travels. However, the slowing down in trade activities continues to put pressures on both passenger and freight traffic in the coming months.

TABLE 1: Airports reporting the highest traffic volume in 1H 2015 (with respective growth rate from last year) according to preliminary traffic data

Top 3 airports by size²
Passenger				Freight
> 40M	25M to 40M	15M to 25M	5M to 15M
Beijing (PEK) + 6%	Mumbai (BOM) +17.8%	Jeju (CJU) +14.1%	Madras (MAA) +13.3%	Hong Kong (HKG)+0.6%
Dubai (DXB) + 10.4%	Shenzhen (SZX) +11.7%	Seoul (GMP) +8%	Osaka Itami (ITM)+1.2%	Shanghai Pudong (PVB) +5.0%
Tokyo Haneda (HND) +4.8%	Shanghai (SHA) +2.2%	Abu Dhabi (AUH) +17.3%	Phuket (HKT) +10.3%	Dubai (DXB) +2.8%