Geneva airport hits record traffic, profits in 1999

(Reuters) -- Geneva's Cointrin international airport has set new records for passenger traffic and operating profits in 1999, according to its director-general.

(Reuters) — Geneva’s Cointrin international airport has set new records for passenger traffic and operating profits in 1999, according to its director-general.

Jean-Pierre Jobin was speaking at a ceremony saluting the seven millionth passenger to pass through the terminal this year — a Swiss women travelling with her husband to New York to celebrate the millennium.

Jobin said the figure marked a growth of eight percent over passenger traffic in 1998, at 6.5 million the previous highest on record, and was some two percent above the average increase at European airports this year.

Profits would hit SFr20 million ($12.5 million), he told reporters.

Jobin said the increase was partly due to an overall surge in passenger traffic in Europe this year, but also to the booming operations from Geneva of the British-based low-cost airline easyJet.

During 1999, some 450,000 easyJet passengers passed through Cointrin, putting it close behind the British flag-carrier British Airways Plc which officials said had moved some 600,000 people to and from Geneva during the year.
Another element in the profit growth was the world’s biggest telecommunications exhibition, TELECOM, held in Geneva every four years and which this year brought a record 100,000 visitors and exhibitors.

The main company operating from the airport is SAirGroup Plc , with flights to the rest of Europe and a handful beyond by the national carrier Swissair and its smaller regional partner Crossair.

Cointrin, opened in 1920, was for years a major hub for long-haul flights by Swissair. But in 1997 most of these were switched to Zurich’s Kloten airport, despite fierce protests from political and business leaders in western Switzerland.

Jobin said Cointrin had still not recovered fully from the Swissair move, but was slowly regaining its position as a long-haul centre for other airlines. In October, the Cuban flagcarrier Cubana de Aviacion began a weekly flight to Havana.

Despite the two records in 1999, Cointrin management still faces paying a bill of SFr60 million ($37.5 million) to the Geneva canton government as indemnities to residents near the airport for nuisance caused by noise.

The airport, once administered by the cantonal government but autonomous since 1994, has appealed against the decision to the Swiss Federal Court in Lausanne, and a ruling is expected next year.