The number of passengers at Keflavík International Airport is expected to drop by nearly one million this year. Isavia, the national airport and air navigation service provider of Iceland, presented its 2019 projections at a meeting in Reykjavík this morning.
Björn Óli Hauksson, Isavia’s managing director, stated that 2018 was a record year for the airport, both in terms of the numbers of foreign travellers and locals who landed at the airport and the number of travellers stopping over on longer trips. “Despite that, there were alarm bells during nearly all of 2018,” Björn stated, explaining that 2017 was a difficult year for airlines around Europe. The strengthening króna, Björn says, has also impacted the number of travellers reaching Icelandic shores.
Nearly one million fewer travellers in 2019
Keflavík Airport has seen a dramatic increase in the number of passengers over the past eight years. While in 2010, just over 2 million travellers passed through the airport. That number rose steadily, reaching nearly 10 million in 2018.
Isavia’s projections for 2019 show a significant decrease, from 9,804,315 passengers in 2018 to nearly one million fewer this year: 8,951,982. This figure represents a 2.2% decrease in departing passengers, a 2.1% decrease in arriving passengers, and an 18.7% decrease in stopovers. The overall decrease of passengers travelling through the airport is projected at 8.7%.
Monthly increase in June-August and November-December
Foreign travellers at the airport are expected to decrease by 3.3%, while locals are expected to decrease by 2.4%, the first year since 2009 that shows such a decrease. The decrease in foreign passengers at the airport is expected to be most noticeable in the first months of the year, with June to August and November to December actually showing higher monthly numbers of passengers than in 2018.
