LJLA breaks through 5m-passenger mark for first time since 2011

Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LJLA) is a 5m-passenger operation once more.

Annual rolling passenger figures for the 12 months to the end of June have revealed that LJLA had broken through the 5m mark for the first time since 2011.

Traffic had suffered due to the impact of the 2008 global recession.

Since then the Peel-owned airport has striven to build passenger numbers back to the point when it was regularly in the league table of the UK’s Top Ten airports.

Alongside additional new routes, LJLA is also beginning to see the effects of further investment at the riverside site by budget carrier easyJet.

The low-cost airline added an extra jet at LJLA last month, bringing its total to eight now serving the airport.

Latest statistics show that easyJet is now carrying more passengers, compared with the same period last year.

New figures covering the current busy Summer period show that, on the weekend of July 20, when the main school holidays began, and also when easyJet’s eighth airplane started operations, LJLA handled around 50,000 passengers.

LJLA spokesman Robin Tudor said: “This was a busy weekend, but similar to last year.

“However, interestingly, we are now starting to see the full effect of the additional easyJet services and the following week easyJet carried an additional 5,000 passengers.”

He said that, in August, so far, easyJet have 16% more passengers compared with last year, which is approximately an extra 9,000 extra passengers.

Rival budget airline, Ryanair, flies more routes from LJLA – 35 – compared with easyJet’s 33, but easyJet is the biggest operator, by passenger numbers, at the airport.

LJLA is also experiencing an uplift in passenger numbers as more operators and routes come into play, LJLA spokesman Robin Tudor said.

Liverpool has seen a number of new routes launched in the preceding months, such as Romanian operator Blue Air, and the latest, starting tomorrow, when Scandinavia’s largest regional airline Widerøe begins operating its twice-weekly service between Liverpool and Bergen, in Norway.

Departures will take place on Mondays and Fridays, with connections available in Bergen to other Scandinavian cities including Oslo and Helsinki.

The timings will appeal to Norwegian Liverpool fans – Bergen is reported to have the second highest number of LFC fans in Norway.

Indeed, tomorrow’s Widerøe launch was moved a week ahead of schedule to cater for Liverpool’s first home game of the Premier League season this weekend.

Mr Tudor said football traffic had played an important part in boosting passenger numbers: “Liverpool’s Champions League final in May was important and created a bit of a spike,” he said.

In early July LJLA revealed that passenger numbers had continued to grow, with figures for June 2.5% higher than in 2017.

This took passenger growth at Liverpool for the first six months of 2018 to 3%, compared with the same period last year.

Almost 470,000 passengers travelled through LJLA in June, with more than 2.4 million passengers choosing to use the airport during the first six months of this year – in excess of 70,000 more than in 2017 and the highest first half of the year since 2011.

Mr Tudor said: “Our rolling annual figures to the end of June show we had just gone through the five million mark. Rolling it forward to the end of our 2018 calendar year, we’re still confident we will be in excess of five million passengers.”