Air traffic at Kuwait International Airport grew six percent in 2012 compared to 2011, deputy director of civil aviation Nabil Al-Zamel said yesterday. The number of passengers going through the airport increased five percent last year, he said as he noted that these increases occurred at a time when the air travel industry worldwide had experienced rough going due in the main to the global economic slump, particularly in Europe, and political turmoil in different regions of the Middle East. However with Kuwait’s Open Skies policy and its continuing trend to sign bilateral agreements with more international air carriers and its constant streamlining of services directed at passenger and airlines alike, all converged to encourage air carriers to increase their flights to and through Kuwait last year, he said. For instance airlines Bahrain Air, Iran’s Zagros Air, and Thailand’s Jet Asia ramped up their flights through Kuwait’s major airport as did Qatar Airways, FlyDubai, Gulf Air, Turkish Airlines, Egypt Air and Emirates, to name a few. Al-Zamel, further, noted that the number of air passengers using Kuwait airport last year topped 8.9 million compared to 8.5 million in 2011. Those numbers translated into over 85,567 flights in 2012 and 85,117 flights in 2011, he said. Air cargo also was quite brisk in 2012 where over 181 million kgs of merchandize were transported.