The number of passengers travelling via the Beirut International Airport (BIA) fell by 6.84% y-o-y in the first five months of 2024 to 2.29 million, down from 2.46 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 5.37% y-o-y to 1,138,802 with the number of departing travelers decreasing by 8.01% to 1,150,520 and the number of transit travelers receding by 67.19% to 1,549. Concurrently, the number of flights saw an annual decline of 9.34% over the concerned period to 19,306. It is worth highlighting in this context that the share of Middle East Airlines (MEA) fell from 44.35% of the total number of flights in the first five months of 2023 to 39.07% in the same period this year. This is further sketched in the table below: