Malta International Airport (MIA) reported the third strongest passenger growth among large European airports in April, compared to the same month last year.
This emerged from a recent traffic report released by Airports Council International (ACI), analysing recent trends across European airports.
Among airports classified as large, MIA reported passenger growth of 13.5 per cent, the third largest growth in this category after Tirana (+25.3 per cent) and Charleroi (+16.2 per cent).
Rounding out the top five in this category were Milan Linate (+13.3 per cent) and Kraków (+13 per cent).
In a statement, MIA pointed out that it continued its momentum into May, welcoming 1.08 million passengers last month, up by 16.5 per cent from May 2025.
ACI classifies a ‘large airport’ as one that handles between 10 to 25 million passengers annually, which means MIA entered this category after breaking past the 10 million passenger barrier last year.
‘Mega airports’ are those that handle 25 million to 40 million passengers a year, while ‘major airports’ handle over 40 million.
MIA's success went very much against the grain of Europe's largest airports. Large airports recorded average passenger growth of merely 0.1 per cent between April 2025 and April 2026, while traffic at major airports declined by 3.5 per cent and mega airports recorded a 1 per cent drop.
In contrast, medium-sized airports posted growth of 2.1 per cent, and small airports saw passenger numbers increase by 5.5 per cent.
On average, passenger traffic across the European airport network between April 2025 and April 2026 fell by -0.7 per cent, the first year-on-year drop in passenger traffic since the post-COVID-19 recovery period.
ACI attributed this decline to a number of factors, including the Middle East war, the partial shift of the Easter holidays into March and industrial action impacting the German market.
