Summer has exceeded expectations at the SCN

Some 264,000 passengers departed from SCN for one of nine southern vacation destinations

After the end of the fall vacations, Saarbrücken Airport can look back on this summer's flight operations with great satisfaction: around 264,000 passengers took off from SCN to one of the nine southern vacation destinations. That is around 33,000 or a good 14 percent more than in the comparatively good year of 2019, when there were around 231,000 passengers to the vacation destinations in the first ten months.

The Chairman of the SCN Supervisory Board, Economics Minister Jürgen Barke, is also positive about the summer: "Saarbrücken Airport is the first choice for very many vacationers because of its smooth operations and attractive destinations. It also paid off that we retained employees during the two pandemic years and even hired new staff at times."

SCN Managing Director Thomas Schuck was also "very satisfied," especially since demand was initially restrained, but then the desire to travel rose very quickly in the spring. "Our expectations were already exceeded at Whitsun. This development continued in the summer, and the fall vacations brought another positive boost," said Schuck.

The statistics for the months January to October show that four of the summer destinations, namely Crete, the two Canary Islands Fuerteventura and Las Palmas, and Antalya, developed extremely positively. The two airlines SunExpress and Corendon carried around 81,000 passengers to the Turkish Riviera, a good 30,000 or around 56 percent more than three years ago. The rate of increase to Crete was almost as high at around 47 percent, with around 22,000 passengers flying there. Passenger numbers to Mallorca were at a similar level to last year before the pandemic, with around 110,000, or around 4,000 or four percent fewer people traveling there than in 2019.

It is already clear for the coming summer season that SmartLynx will again serve the same destinations with the same frequency as this summer on behalf of TUI Deutschland: Majorca, the Greek islands of Crete, Kos and Rhodes, and the Canary Islands of Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Tenerife. SunExpress will not only increase the number of flights to Antalya to up to seven flights per week and fly to the destination all year round, but has also announced a new destination, the metropolis of Izmir, which can also already be booked. From May 26, 2023, there will initially be one flight a week to the Turkish Aegean, followed by two flights a week from June 25.