easyJet carried over 6.4 million passengers to and from Scotland last year.
The business claims that this is more than any airline has ever flown in one year, and it shows an 11% increase over the previous year and a third more than five years ago.
With over 3.6 million of the passengers flying from Edinburgh traffic to and from the capital accounted for the largest share of the traffic.
While 2 million of last year’s passengers flew for business, the airline is keen to get you on board a flight taking you on holiday too. A new service from Edinburgh to Bilbao will be launched this year which is expected to carry around 40,000 passengers on an A320 aircraft.
Sophie Dekkers, UK Director for easyJet, commented: “As Scotland’s largest airline carrying more than 6m passengers annually, we offer an unrivalled network of over 60 routes served from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness.
“We remain committed to growing in Scotland and easyJet not only supports Scottish tourism and business travel but also ensures it is easy and affordable for Scots to have direct air links to so many European destinations.
“Scotland’s appeal as both a leisure and business destination stretches beyond Europe and in calendar year 2016 over 100,000 bookings were made by passengers from outside Europe on routes involving Scottish airports. Of those over 37,000 were from the United States and over 8,000 from the Far East including 2,000 from China.
“This growth can continue well into the future if the Scottish Government continues with its plans to cut Air Passenger Duty by 50% for all flights from Scotland. If the Scottish Government confirms soon that this reduction will take effect from April 2018 we would expect to increase easyJet services by around 30%.”
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
