 |
| The Air Arabia Maroc launch this week – another five routes could potentially be served with between three and four weekly flights if utilisation of both aircraft was maximised. |
As Morocco welcomes a new airline to its skies this week anna.aero takes a look at traffic developments in the North African country that has signed an “open-skies” agreement with Europe. Although total airport traffic grew by 6.1% in 2008 Morocco has not been immune to the problems facing the air transport industry in recent months.
 |
| Source: www.onda.ma |
However, traffic in the first quarter of 2009 is down a relatively modest 3.1%. Although passenger numbers are down 6% at Casablanca and 8.8% in Marrakech, demand is up at Agadir (2.0%), Fez (7.9%), Tangier (40.8%) and Rabat (8.2%).
The launch of Air Arabia Maroc services from Casablanca to six destinations across Belgium, France, Italy and the UK should help provide some extra stimulus to that airport’s traffic for the rest of 2009.
3 Comments
The figures shown for Agadir should not be regarded as an upward trend.
Agadir always recieves an influx of tourists from Northern europe in the winter.
During the summer, the figures drop again.
With Ryan air not servicing Agadir now from Stansted, the passenger figures will drop.
so what do people attribute the 40% increase at Tangier too ? is the increased capacity and new terminal ?
Tangier – surely the vast expansion in Northern European ownership of property along the western med coast, and down from Tangier to Asilah etc will be one key reason – alongside the wider business expansion of Tangier area and ports etc.
Note – given the rather bizarre and discriminatory levels of departure tax by UK government on flights to Europe vs non-Europe (and differentials will be getting even wider after the recent budget ??), the arrivals data at Tangier will still be skewed to departures out of Europe not UK. eg easyjet fly to Tangier – but only really from Madrid – so UK based property owners like me) do a 2-hop journey UK-Madrid-Tangiers. Moroccan government needs to get on and lobby UK government to remove this abritrary discrimination – which causes UK tourists to fly less to Morocco than they would otherwise.