Q: What is the business plan for the next year and how are the projections in respect of business levels and passenger numbers up to 2020?
In 2015 the development of Flughafen Graz was excellent and compared with 2014 there was a passenger increase of more than 7%. We hope that the positive development in passenger figures will last for the next year, but because of the many challenges in European aviation it certainly will be at a lower level.
Q: How important is the congress/business tourism segment in the overall structure of passengers?
We don’t have accurate information about the share of the congress/business tourism segement in the structure of our passengers, but Graz is a town with many congresses and – more important – of a highly qualified industry (the auto cluster, for example). More than 80% of our passangers use scheduled flights, the lion’s share of them being business passengers.
Q: In which areas do you think your airport will grow in future years?
To keep the quality and quantity of flights at same level or higher is one of our basic strategies. So
growing the aviation business goes hand in hand with growing the non-aviation business, making a further increase of non-aviation business another important strategy.
Q: What can you tell us about new airlines coming on stream?
In 2015 SWISS started a daily flight to Zürich, the major Swiss transfer airport, and since the end of June Turkish Airlines has been flying four times a week to Istanbul, which offers the opportunity to take advantage of many onward connections to the Near and Far East and Africa. Airberlin added six flights to Berlin, which improved the service to the German capital, so now there are two daily flights from Berlin to Graz and back from Monday to Friday. The flights are operated once a day at the weekend.
