Baku, October 5, AZERTAC

Heydar Aliyev International Airport served 365,000 passengers in September this year, which is 29 percent higher than the same period of last year.

Over nine months of 2016 the Baku airport served 2.5 million passengers. Of them, 1.5 million passengers preferred AZAL. This is 13 percent higher than in September last year.

During the same period, the cargo terminals of airport transported 11.4 million tons of cargo.

431,000 passengers were transported on domestic flights of Azerbaijan Airlines to Nakhchivan and Ganja, which is 15 percent of total passenger traffic.

Istanbul, Moscow, Dubai and Kiev remained the most popular international destinations from Baku. 38.3 percent of the total number of passengers traveling abroad account for them. The list of the most popular destinations in 2016 also included Antalya, Tehran and Tbilisi. The large influx of passengers this year was observed from Iraqi cities - Baghdad, Basra and Najaf. Their total number amounted to almost 60,000.

In 2016, Pegasus, Iraqi Airways, Fly Baghdad, ATA Airlines, Air Cairo and Komaviatrans began operating flights to Azerbaijan. With the entry of the winter flight schedule (October 30) into force Russian low-cost airline "Pobeda" (Rostov-Baku) and Iranian airline Mahan Air (Tehran-Baku) will open regular flights.

The new airport terminal of Heydar Aliyev Airport (Terminal 1) was put into operation in April 2014. Its total area is 65,000 square meters.

Heydar Aliyev International Airport was awarded the category of "4 stars" by the Skytrax, which is influential British consulting company specializing in the study of the quality of services provided by various airlines and airports worldwide.