Tourism
INSTAT: 4.8 million air passengers in July-September, up 23.3%; rail freight falls 45%
Third-quarter data show strong growth in flights and ports, while the railway carried only 85,900 tons of goods.
By ANN Newsroom · Newsroom
October 30, 2026, 14:50 · Updated 19:02 · 1 min read
In brief
- Airlines carried 4,799,773 passengers in the third quarter, up from 3,892,761 a year earlier.
- The volume of goods traded by sea rose 6.9%; the Port of Durrës handled 95.8% of it.
- Goods carried by rail fell 45%, to 85,900 tons.
In the third quarter of 2026, 4,799,773 passengers traveled on airlines in Albania, compared with 3,892,761 in the same period last year, an increase of 23.3%, according to data released Friday by the Institute of Statistics (INSTAT).
Busier skies
In July-September, 35 foreign airlines operated in Albania. A total of 153,664 aircraft flew through Albanian airspace, 81.7% of them overflights. The volume of air cargo reached 732 tons, 76.2% of it inbound, up 2.5% from a year earlier.
Ports: Durrës leads in freight, Saranda in passengers
The volume of goods traded by sea, both exports and imports, rose 6.9%. The Port of Durrës handled 95.8% of seaborne goods, or 2.342 million tons, and its total volume grew 9.7%. The group “coke and refined petroleum products” made up 17.5% of goods in the ports, followed by basic metals at 15.6%.
A total of 955,988 people traveled through seaports: 48.4% through the Port of Saranda, 42.6% through Durrës and 9.0% through Vlora. Some 276 ships entered and left the ports, 257 of them foreign, 5.7% more than in the third quarter of 2025.
Rail keeps declining
In the opposite direction, only 85,900 tons of goods were carried by rail, 45% less than a year earlier, while the ton-kilometer measure fell 38.7%, from 4.867 million to 2.984 million. The operating network is 253 kilometers long, and 98.3% of the goods were coal, lignite, crude oil and natural gas.
