Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) International Airport expects 2017 to be just as promising as 2016 as passenger, movements and cargo tonnage records continue to grow.

Year-on-year aircraft movements have moved up 18 per cent, with charter flights running throughout the summer for the first time as Ras Al Khaimah moves towards being a year round destination for tourists. In addition, the airport’s first scheduled direct service to Europe kicked off with a connection to Prague.  As a result passenger volume to date has increased 6 per cent over 2016.

On the cargo front volumes are up 30.2 per cent on prior year as the long-term strategy for the sector, which included additional routes coming on stream, comes to fruition. This growth has also impacted overall aircraft movements which are up 17.6 per cent year-on-year.

Mohammed Qazi, the airport’s CEO, said: “2017 started strongly as we continued our focus on promoting Ras Al Khaimah as the fastest-growing tourist destination regionally as well as the specialist cargo centre in the regional market, but summer was something we wanted to target this year as an indicator of our growing success. Even though the summer success has seen us breaking previous records, we have already finalized our winter charters schedules and are introducing further new scheduled routes, such as Romania, starting from December.”

“While the commercial performance has been at its strongest in our history, we have also invested in infrastructure with a new departures terminal and we’ll be completing our cargo expansion by the end of the year,” Qazi added. - TradeArabia News Service