Azerbaijani airports served 1.85 million passengers in the January to May 2019

Baku airport accounts for 85 per cent of all air passengers visiting Azerbaijan (Heydar Aliyev International Airport)

Azerbaijan’s airports collectively served 1.85 million passengers in the first five months of this year, with 1.57 million of them using the capital’s Baku Heydar Aliyev International Airport, a one per cent improvement on the same period in 2018.

During the January-to May period, the base carriers at Baku airport – AZAL, the country’s flag carrier and its low-cost subsidiary Buta Airways – carried passenger totals of 649,000 and 177,000 respectively.

The number of passengers flying on international services from Baku airport amounted to 1.36 million in the period, with 32.2 per cent of them AZAL customers and 13 per cent on Buta Airways flights. The collective share of foreign airlines operating through Baku during this period reached 54.8 per cent.

An unusual peak of daily activity was registered in the period from May 27 to May 30 as a direct result of the UEFA Europa League final held in the city when Heydar Aliyev airport served approximately 600 flights in total. Of these, 57 were charter flights and 10 were additional regular flights put on by airlines such as FlyDubai, AirArabia, SCAT, IsrAir, Jazeera etc. The swell of passenger traffic numbers through Azerbaijan’s main airport during the top football match amounted to some 60,000.

Currently, although 27 passenger airlines operate direct flights to Baku airport, from the Azerbaijani airports of Ganja in the west of the country and from the landlocked exclave of Nakhchivan, direct flights can be found operating to Moscow and Istanbul and from Gabala (in the north) to Moscow. Elsewhere, the national airline AZAL also operates regular direct flights to Moscow from Lankaran on the Caspian coast.