Croatian airports served 1.25 million passengers in August 2021, an increase of 114 percent compared with the same month of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic had reduced the number of passengers to 585,000, state agency Hina said on Thursday, citing data released by the state statistics bureau.

However, the 2021 figures were still 36 percent down from August 2019, the last year before the Covid-19 pandemic, when Croatia’s airports handled a total of 1.95 million passengers.

In August 2021, Split Airport was the busiest, with 491,000 passengers,or 81 percent up from August 2020. It was followed by Dubrovnik Airport with 288,000 passengers (+146 percent), Zagreb Airport with 193,000 passengers (+108 percent), Zadar Airport with 163,000 passengers (+234 percent), Pula Airport with 90,200 passengers (+121 percent), Rijeka Airport with 18,700 passengers (+97 percent), Brac Airport with 2,300 passengers (+50 percent) and Mali Losinj Airport with 691,000 passengers (+66 percent).

The only airport to report a year-on-year drop was Osijek Airport, which handled slightly over 2,000 passengers in August, a 16.4 percent drop from the year before.

By country of origin, the largest number of passengers arrived from Germany – 242,000 – an increase of 92 percent compared to August 2020.

As for freight transport, the airports handled a total of 769 tonnes of cargo in August 2021, or 28.6 percent up from August 2020. Over the first eight months of this year, the volume of cargo increased by 9.4 percent to a total of 5,498 tonnes.