Prague airport reports 13% drop in no.of take-offs, landings

Prague, Jan 25 (CTK) - The number of aircraft landings and take-offs at Vaclav Havel Airport Prague, the Czech Republic's largest airport, fell by almost 13 percent to nearly 132,000 last year, according to statistics of air traffic controller RLP made available to CTK.

Air traffic over the Czech Republic dropped by less than 2 percent last year. Letiste Brno-Turany was the only large transport airport in the country where traffic increased in the year.

The Prague airport ascribes the fall in air traffic to the restructuring of Czech Airlines (CSA), the airport's biggest partner. CSA is cutting the number of flights.

"The decrease in the number of passengers will be smaller compared with the fall in air traffic because planes are fuller now," the airport's spokeswoman Eva Krejci told CTK.

The growth in the number of people departing from Prague or arriving in it as their final destination was a positive trend last year. The airport has not yet provided complete operating results including transit passengers but passenger numbers fell by almost 8.5 percent in January-November.

In the whole of 2012, air traffic controllers directed over 700,000 movements of planes over the Czech Republic. The strongest traffic, as usual, was in the summer and in July the number climbed to 2,300 flights a day, RLP said.

With average occupancy of planes, this represents 350,000 passengers a day, RLP spokesman Richard Klima added.

Lufthansa is traditionally the biggest client for RLP and is thus also the number one airline in Czech skies. Next come Emirates, Air Berlin and British Airways.

State-owned RLP was established on January 1, 1995. It provides services to users of Czech airspace and at the airports of Prague-Ruzyne, Brno-Turany, Ostrava-Mosnov and Karlovy Vary.

RLP raised gross profit by 38.1 percent year on year to Kc280m in 2011, partly thanks to the then growth in air traffic by 4.6 percent.