A record number of passengers in December, +0.5% in 2019

Reunion’s Roland Garros Airport welcomed a record number of 242,138 passengers in December (+6.8%) and a total of 2,488,014 passengers for the whole of 2019 (+0.5%).

Daily peaks of over 10,000 passengers were recorded on 21st and 28th December. During this last month of the year, the number of local passengers, either starting or ending their journey in Reunion, increased by 8.4% while the slowdown in transit traffic was confirmed (just over a thousand passengers, -75%).

We observed an 8.3% increase in flights between Mainland France and Reunion, a route which had been heavily affected just a year earlier during the ‘yellow jacket’ strikes. For flights within the region, the number of passengers rose by 8.9% overall, thanks to a dynamic increase observed for all destinations: Mauritius (+8.6%), Mayotte (+7.9%), Madagascar (+12%), South Africa (+13.3%), Seychelles (+7.5%) and Comoros (+0.6%).

International long-haul routes saw a more modest increase of 0.9%, thanks to a 10.2% increase in passengers on flights to Bangkok, and this despite a 2.4% drop in numbers flying to Chennai (India) and 47.5% to Guangzhou (Canton, China).

Freight traffic fell by 3.1% to 4,019 tonnes, mainly due to a reduction in the frequency of cargo flights. Note: over the month, exports were higher than imports.

For the whole of 2019, the recovery observed in November and December offset the slowdown observed since January. Roland Garros airport continued to grow (+0.5%), albeit at a slower pace than in the previous two years.

The number of local passengers increased by 1.2% while the number of transit passengers fell by 31.1%, affected by a drop in Corsair's operations across the Indian Ocean zone and by a decrease in traffic on Air Madagascar's flights from Tananarive to Guangzhou via Reunion.

On flights to Mainland France, following the end of XL Airways operations in September, the number of passengers remained stable compared to 2018. On the other hand, it increased by 2.9% on regional routes, where increased activity was observed between Roland Garros airport and airports in Madagascar (+14.4%): Tananarive, Nosy-Be, Tamatave and Sainte-Marie, but also Fort-Dauphin and Tuléar (twice-weekly flights have been operating from Reunion since December 2018), as well as Diégo-Suarez (flights operate during the periods of major school holidays).

The number of passengers on flights between Reunion and South Africa increased by 11.5%. There was less growth to the Seychelles (+3.1%), Mauritius (the second largest share of the airport's traffic, +0.8%) and Mayotte (+0.1%). On the other hand, a continued decline was confirmed for Comoros (-24.7%).

On the international long-haul flights, the number of passengers rose overall by 5.5% in 2019, despite a 17.1% drop on flights between Reunion and Guangzhou. Flights to and from Bangkok saw an increase of 5.9% and the Chennai flight connection attracted 24.2% more passengers than in 2018.

Finally, cargo traffic recorded a slight drop (-0.3%) in 2019, a decline noted both in terms of tonnage landed (-0.2%, 20 607 tonnes) and exports (-0.4%, 8 498 tonnes).