A record high number of passengers used the north’s Ercan (Tymbou) airport in 2024, the airport’s holding company T&T announced on Thursday. 

In total, exactly 4,842,134 passengers either arrived at or departed from the airport last year – almost a million more than the number recorded in 2023 – with a total of 30,865 flights taking off or landing from the airport. 

Last year was the first full year in which both the new terminal and the new runway were operational, with both being the largest of their kind on the island of Cyprus.  

As the north is unrecognised internationally, the airport can only operate direct flights to and from Turkey, with five airlines currently serving routes to 11 destinations across the country. 

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With this in mind, there have been calls in recent months for the airport to be treated as a domestic airport by Turkey. This would allow flights to and from the airport to be subject to lower taxes than they are at present, given that the Turkish government taxes international flights at a much higher rate than domestic flights. 

2024 was also a record year for the Republic’s two airports, Larnaca and Paphos, with more than 12 million passengers either arriving at or departing from the two. 

“The levels of passenger traffic recorded in recent months is indicative of the consistently strong demand for air travel and the momentum Cyprus has,” the two airports’ holding company Hermes’ airports’ senior director Maria Kouroupi said. 

She added that “the very good results and the new record which is expected to be reached … confirm Hermes airports’ successful strategy”. 

The figures come at the end of a year in which Deputy Tourism Minister Costas Koumis said Cyprus has “no room for growth” in terms of its summer tourism numbers. 

He said during budget discussions at the House finance committee in November that the island’s tourism is seeing a “balanced increase” in the number of people holidaying on the island – a fact he described as “healthy” for the tourism sector.