Paris airports log record 88.8m passengers in 2012

The two Paris airports, Charles de Gaulle and Orly, registered a record 88.8 million passengers last year, but growth of the number nonetheless slowed to 0.8 percent, airport operator Aeroports de Paris (ADP) said on Tuesday. That contrasted with much stronger growth at smaller regional French hubs like Marseille, where traffic jumped by 12.7 percent to 8.3 million and Toulouse, which posted an increase of 8.2 percent to 7.5 million passengers. A breakdown of the headline number showed that Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, also known as Roissy and the second busiest European airport after London's Heathrow, handled 61.6 million passengers in 2012, an increase of 1.1 percent. Paris-Orly recorded a slight gain of 0.3 percent to 27.2 million passengers. In terms of destinations, flights to the Asia-Pacific region increased by 5.1 percent, to the Middle East by 2.7 percent and to Africa by 2.1 percent. Service to and from North America was down by 1.2 percent.