Up to eighteen million passengers could be transported by Václav Havel Prague Airport this year. It would be another record in a row. Last year, approximately 16.8 million passengers took advantage of this hub.

This stems from a prediction published yesterday by the executive director of the non-aviation business airport, Jiří Petržilka. “We will reach a record threshold of two million passengers a month during the summer months of July and August,” he said.

There are two reasons for the increase. On the one hand, the number of foreign tourists is growing, and Czechs are also traveling more, for example, on extended weekends. “If infrastructure did not limit us, the increase could have been even higher,” added Petržilka.

Prague Airport, together with the ING Czech Republic, has introduced a survey of what Czechs expect from traveling and their relationship to air travel, in addition to the expected number of passengers and news for the summer season. It suggests that three-quarters of the Czech Republic’s population are driven abroad mainly by the desire for discovery and three-fifths to gain new experience.

On the contrary, some are still discouraged by communicating in a foreign language. This option was chosen by 35 percent of this May´s survey respondents. “Mostly, it concerns people between 40 and 65,” said Radek Sedlář from ING ČR. On the other hand, more than half of young people in their thirties travel because of learning foreign languages.