Madrid airport registers biggest European passenger growth

Madrid's Adolfo Suarez Barajas airport saw the highest growth in passenger numbers among all of the major European airports in the first half of 2015 according to figures published on Thursday by the Airports International Council Europe (ACI).

The figures show that Barajas was used by 21,741,630 travelers during the first half of 2015, a rise of 11.4 percent (2.2 million people) over the same period in 2014.

That rise can partly be attributed to the increasing numbers of people who are again visiting Spain as a tourist destination in 2015 and also to the increase in popularity of the Spanish capital as a destination.

Madrid had suffered falling tourist numbers in recent years, despite the popularity of the rest of Spain, but the city's development into a high-end destination for sporting, cultural and gastronomy tourists has seen those numbers pick up in recent months.

Despite the rise in the number of people using Barajas, it retains its status as the sixth most important airport, while Barcelona's El Prat airport is in ninth place after the first six months of the year saw a 4.8 percent rise in users with 18,053,718 people passing though.

The most important airports in Europe according to the ACI are London-Heathrow with 35,535,460 passengers, Paris Charles de Gaulle, with 31,298,513 travelers and Frankfort with 28,922,862, while Istanbul is in fourth place and Amsterdam in fifth.