Glasgow airport is aiming to grow its passenger volume around 8% to 8.3 million passengers this year as its traffic gradually recovers back toward the 2006 peak of 8.85 million.
Last year, the Scottish city's gateway racked around 7.72 million passengers, nearly 5% more than in 2013.
Much of that growth was a result of budget carriers Ryanair and Wizz Air transferring flights from Glasgow Prestwick airport to the city's main airport. Wizz moved all flights across, while Ryanair decided to serve routes aimed at business travellers from Glasgow airport and retain a number of flights to leisure destinations at Prestwick.
However, Glasgow also attracted Canadian carrier WestJet, which is set to open a seasonal daily service from Halifax with Boeing 737s. This will make Glasgow the second European city after Dublin to be served by the Calgary-based operator.
Virgin Atlantic will trial flights to Las Vegas with 747s in September and October, the airport's marketing and customer insight manager Steven Marshall told Flightglobal at Routes Europe in Aberdeen. This will be additional capacity on the route, which leisure carrier Thomas Cook is already operating with Airbus A330s.
Virgin has for some time been using Glasgow airport for twice-weekly summer flights to Orlando.
In total, Glasgow airport has added 19 routes over the course of 2014 and this year. Marshall says the growth is largely a result of increasing awareness of Glasgow as a destination following the Commonwealth Games in the city in 2014.
Over the next year, traffic is set to continue growing albeit at a slower rate. The airport aims to reach up to 8.6 million passengers in 2016, says Marshall.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
