What a way to start your 80th year than by smashing records?!
Record broken at Luton Airport as the CEO Nick Barton has revealed that 2017 saw passenger numbers jumping by 8.6% to 15.7 million.
This comes as great news to the airport in the lead up to its 80th birthday in July, with even more growth expected.
What has contributed to the success?
A few factors over recent years have contributed to the rising success of Luton, these include expansion to the site, bringing with it a brand new boarding pier with eight new boarding gates, as well as development to the terminal buildings which has allowed more restaurants and shopping brands to land at the airport.
As well as improvements to the facilities at Luton, the airport has also added a host of new flight routes including Wizz Air’s latest additions to the destination map, such as Athens, Larnaca, Keflavik in Iceland and the Italian city of Bari. As well as this, easyJet is adding five new routes including to Genoa and Reus. The great addition of new routes in both 2017 & 2018 means that passengers will have over 140 destinations to choose from across Europe, Asia and Africa.
Mr Barton said: “2017 has been another record breaker and we look forward to welcoming even more passengers as we enter our 80th year.
“Throughout 2018, passengers will see the airport transformed as we officially open our new terminal and reach the first phase of construction for the mass passenger transit system which will replace the current shuttle bus and create a rapid link between the train station and the terminal.
“However, this is only part of the solution to better public transport links and is why we continue to call on the government for four fast trains per hour between central London and Luton Airport Parkway.”
What does the future hold?
The end goal for Luton Airport is to spend £150 million in order to increase the annual capacity by 50% by 2020. This is especially important when it comes to meeting the upcoming demand for travel within the south-east. Improved rail links will also prove vital in order to be able to transport the increasing number of passengers to and from the airport.
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