The number of passengers travelling via the Beirut International Airport (BIA) fell by 6.76% y-o-y in the first quarter of 2024 to 1.27 million, down from 1.36 million passengers a year earlier. This drop in the number of passengers may be attributed to the escalation of tensions on the country’s southern borders in the aftermath of the war on Gaza. More specifically, the number of arriving travelers dropped by 3.81% y-o-y to 619,539 with the number of departing travelers decreasing by 9.15% to 651,169 and the number of transit travelers receding by 73.46% to 748. Concurrently, the number of flights saw an annual decline of 11.55% over the concerned period to 10,887. It is worth highlighting in this context that the share of Middle East Airlines (MEA) fell from 44.81% of the total number of flights in the first quarter of 2023 to 37.94% in the same period this year. This is further sketched in the table below: