The 2015 traffic figures for Queenstown Airport are in, and they reveal that the New Zealand gateway handled a new yearly record of 1.5 million passengers.

December also saw the airport set new records for its busiest month ever and busiest week in its history.

In total 156,636 passengers used the airport in December – a rise of nearly 22% on the corresponding month in 2014.

December witnessed double-digit growth for both domestic and international passengers, the former soaring by 20% in what turned out to be the strongest year-on-year growth in domestic passenger traffic for three years.

Load factors on the Auckland-Queenstown route were very high – over 90% in spite of a combined airline capacity increase of 22% on the route.

International passenger numbers continue to grow strongly and were up 27% over December 2014 with at least 19% growth across all international routes.