Passenger traffic through Armenian airports grew 21% in 2017

Yerevan's Zvartnots and Gyumri's Shirak served a total of 2.554 million passengers (Leonid Faerberg / Transport-photo.com)

Passenger traffic through the two primary Armenian airports, Zvartnots (serving the country’s capital city of Yerevan) and Shirak (in Gyumri) grew 20.6% year-on-year in 2017 to nearly 2.554 million passengers, Arka newswire reports, citing Armenia’s General Department of Civil Aviation.

Zvartnots served2.488 million passengers, 16.3% up on 2016. It also processed 22.3 tons of cargo, up 22.1% on the previous year.

Shirak’s operational results improved more impressively. Its passenger traffic surged 8.5 times to 105,600 passengers, boosted in part by the operations of Russian low-cost carrier Pobeda and Arenia’s Taron-Avia, which added the airport to their route networks last year. Another contributing factor was a 50% reduction in ATM service fees from January 1, 2017.

In December last year, combined through both airports reached 206,600 passengers or up 7.9% on the same month in 2016. Of this number, 192,500 passengers traveled through Zvartnots (up 1.8%) and 14,100 through Shirak (up 5.5 times year-on-year).

Zvartnots saw its traffic grow 12% in 2016, whereas traffic through Gyumri’s airport decreased 68.4%.