Passenger traffic through Baku Airport grows by 27%

The new terminal at Heydar Aliyev Airport in Baku opened in 2014 (Photo by Baku Airport)

Baku Heydar Aliyev International Airport (GYD) recorded traffic numbers of 391 thousand passengers in July this year, a resounding growth of 27% over same period of last year.

Over seven months of 2016 Baku airport provided services to 1.69 million passengers in total. During the same period, the cargo terminal of airport handled 8.9 million tons of cargo, 88% of which was cargo and 12% postage.
The major uptick of the passenger traffic was recorded on international routes. GYD handled 302,000 passengers on domestic flights (an increase of 8% compared to 2015), of which 292,000 accounts for the Baku – Nakhchivan route.

Istanbul, Moscow, Dubai and Kiev have become the most popular international destinations from the capital of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian and UAE airlines transported about 800 thousand passengers on these routes this year. The passenger traffic to the popular Turkish resorts of Antalya, Bodrum, Izmir and Dalaman amounted to 56,500 passengers so far this year.

Baku Heydar Aliyev Airport is part of state-owned AZAL holding. The new airport terminal (Terminal 1) with the total floor area of 65,000 sq m was put into operation in April 2014. Baku Airport was designed for handling 9 million passengers per year. Its base carrier AZAL reported an 8% YOY traffic increase on domestic airlines in the period from January to July this year. The AZAL holding is counting on transit traffic to help transform Azerbaijan’s main airport into a regional hub.