Passenger numbers also up 7.7% on 2016 

Over 603,000 passengers travelled through Glasgow Airport in February representing an increase of 7.7% compared to the same period last year, adjusting for the fact 2016 was a leap year.

The growth was driven by a marked increase in demand for international travel, particularly to the airport’s growing list of direct European routes. Numbers were up 20.3% with destinations such as Paris, Dusseldorf, Brussels, Barcelona and Bucharest all proving extremely popular.

Domestic traffic showed a slight decline of 1.4%, while strong demand for Emirates’ Dubai route helped boost long-haul services by 6.6%.

Amanda McMillan, managing director of Glasgow Airport, said: “We’ve made a strong start to the year and our efforts to secure new routes and provide an even greater destination choice for our passengers continues.

“Our European network continues to grow and will be strengthened significantly in 2017 with the launch of several new Ryanair routes, including Lisbon, Valencia and Palanga this month. Services to Madrid, Frankfurt, Krakow and the Croatian city Zadar will follow later in the year.

“The next two months will also see the introduction of new routes to Dubrovnik, Bergen and the launch of Delta’s new direct service to JFK.

“We expect to see an influx of fans through the airport this month ahead of the Scotland rugby team’s Six Nations tie with Italy on the 18^thand the national football team’s World Cup 2018 qualifier against Slovenia on the 26th. The Easter break also gets underway from March 31st and is traditionally one of our busiest periods.”