Passenger numbers
CAA stats show that BRS handled 437,478 passengers through the terminal in February an increase of 14.8% on February 2015, although as with other airports the additional day this leap year helped. The rolling 12-month total reached 6,885,518 which is 8.2% up on a year ago.
The 7 mppa stage seems certain to be reached and passed this year, although the summer is not likely to see the scale of monthly gains of last year as the base figure will be that much higher, although there will be an additional easyJet aircraft (making 13 at the BRS base) for the main summer period and the Wizz flights will operate right through the season which was not the case in 2015 as the airline only began operations in July and then only to Katowice.
However, what perhaps is more noteworthy is the fact that the winter performance is now assuming a greater role. For a number of years winter has been disproportionately weaker than summer in terms of flights and passenger numbers.
This winter though the period November through to February has seen double digit percentage increases each month.
November 2015 saw over 38,000 more passengers (than November 2014) and December saw 41,000 more than the previous December. This year there were 47,000 more in in January than in January 2015 and February saw an increase of over 56,000 over the previous February.
Overall this has given a percentage rise of 12.2% for these four winter months and in real terms over 182,000 more passengers.
I've not included March as this can be skewed depending on when Easter falls.