Azerbaijani airports' passenger traffic revealed
By Rasana Gasimova
Azerbaijan’s international airports served 4.3 million passengers over the period of January-September 2019, Trend has reported.
Some 3.7 million of these flights accounted for the Heydar Aliyev International Airport, which showed a six-percent increase compared to 2018.
Nakhchivan’s airport served 501,000 passengers, and the airport of Ganja, which served 115,000 passengers, was the third busiest airport in 2019.
During this period, national air carrier AZAL carried 1.6 million passengers, while national low-cost airline Buta Airways carried 443,000 passengers.
The number of passengers on international flights of the capital’s airport amounted to 3.2 million people. In addition to national air carriers, the top ten airlines also included Turkish Airlines (Turkey, 376,000 passengers), FlyDubai (UAE, 194,000), Aeroflot (Russia, 151,000), AirArabia (UAE, 130,000), UIA (Ukraine, 97,000), Qatar Airways (Qatar, 81,000), Lufthansa (Germany, 53,000) and SCAT (Kazakhstan, 47,000).
The number of active passenger airlines at Heydar Aliyev International Airport in August 2019 amounted to 33. In total, they carried out flights to more than 60 different destinations.
Currently, six foreign low-cost carriers - WizzAir (Budapest), AirBaltic (Riga), Pegasus (Izmir), flyNAS (Riyadh), flyDubai (Dubai) and AirArabia (Sharjah) - operate direct flights to Baku airport.
From the airports of Ganja and Nakhchivan direct flights are carried out to Moscow and Istanbul. Also, the national airline AZAL operates regular direct flights from Lankaran and Gabala to Moscow and vice versa.
Heydar Aliyev International Airport (GYD) is the largest airport in Azerbaijan and the region in terms of passenger and freight traffic, takeoff and landing operations, the airport terminal area and capacity of the cargo complex.
The airport has been listed among the top three unusual airports in the world, according to Hi-Tech. In 2017 and 2018, the Heydar Aliyev International Airport was named the best airport among those of CIS countries for the level of services provided and was awarded the maximum rating of "5 Stars" according to Skytrax World Airport Awards.
In 2018, the airport set a new record for passenger traffic volume: it served a total of 4.43 million passengers. This is 9 percent higher than in 2017.
In 2019, Heydar Aliyev international airport was named the best airport with passenger traffic up to 10 million according to Sky Travel Awards.
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