PASSENGER numbers are up at the region’s busiest airport.

Newcastle Airport reported a 16.2 per cent year-on-year increase in passenger numbers in January, with almost 40,000 extra people passing through the terminal.

The strong start to the year follows the airport’s best December figures in a decade.

Increased capacity on Ryanair, easyJet and Jet2 services saw EU traffic up by more than 30 per cent, while strong demand on other routes such as Dubai and Geneva saw non-EU passenger numbers grow by 27 per cent.

New services to Berling and the Polish cities of Gdansk, Warsaw and Wroclaw performed particularly strongly.

John Irving, the airport’s Business Development Director, said: “We recorded our strongest December in over 10 years in 2016 so we are naturally delighted to see the airport carry this momentum into the first month of 2017”.

He added: “January is considered to be a relatively quiet period but as we have continued to invest in the airport and add new routes along with additional capacity, we have experienced an increase in demand for our international services.

“We take our role seriously as the international gateway for the North East and will continue to explore additional routes to help ensure the region remains well connected for both business and leisure destinations.”