Croatian airports handled 7.56 million passengers over the first eight months of 2018, an increase of 10.5 percent from the same period in 2017, the state statistics bureau said on Friday.

In August 2018 alone, the number of passengers recorded was 1.8 million, or 7.6 percent up year-on-year.

Out the country’s nine airports, the top three in terms of passenger traffic in August were Split Airport with 625,000 passengers, 5.8 percent up year-on-year, Dubrovnik Airport with 479,000, or 9.2 percent up, and Zagreb Airport, with 372,000 passengers, or 7.2 percent up.

These were followed by Pula Airport, which handled 161,000 passengers (16.9 percent up) and Zadar Airport with 115,000 (4.3 percent down) – with Zadar being the only airport to register a year-on-year drop.

Rijeka Airport had 40,000 passengers (18.4 percent up), Osijek Airport received 9,500 (33.2 percent up), the airport of the island of Brac registered slightly over 6,000 passengers (4.2 percent up), while the smallest airport, on the island of Mali Losinj, saw a 24 percent increase in passenger traffic, handling little over a 1,000 people.

By country of origin, the top five groups of foreigners arriving to the country via air travel were from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain – with only the numbers of British travellers recording a drop, while visitors from the other four countries increased.

All airports combined handled 1,017 tonnes of cargo in August 2018, or 1.1 percent up from the same month the year before, and 7,900 tonnes over the entire January-August period, or 41 percent up from the first eight months of 2017.

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