Australia's two major airports on Thursday reported spikes on the number of passengers traveling through Melbourne and Sydney in 2010, with both terminal managements attributing the rise to record influx of Chinese and other Asian visitors flocking into the two Aussie cities.

While Sydney Airport saw its revenue steadily growing last year, Melbourne Airport chief executive Chris Woodruff said that an invasion practically engulfed them in the past year as Chinese travelers visiting the city surged by 26 percent while English tourists passing through the terminal went up by 20 percent.

Woodruff added that cricket fans from the United Kingdom contributed to the record figures, most notably in the month of December, when passenger growth was further pushed up "by the Ashes series and the traveling English supporters."

Melbourne Airport said that some 27.7 million passengers were ferried to the city in 2010, which was an increase of 10 percent from the previous year, as the management also noted that up to 14 percent of that result was comprised by international travelers.

The past year, also saw marked improvements on domestic traffic in Melbourne as airport management revealed that inland travellers increased by nine percent to 1,763,367 in 2010.

Woodruff said that more than 40,000 UK nationals visited the city in December alone, which shored up the Melbourne English visitor numbers by 20 percent as against to the figures recorded in 2009. New Zealanders followed suit by posting a 19 percent increase, with Malaysians, Singaporeans and Indians completing the list of the city's dominant number of tourists in 2010.

Melbourne Airport is projecting that its growth numbers would be further enhanced in 2011 as Air China, China Eastern and China Southern are poised to fly into the city this year.

Meanwhile, the MAp Group, owner and operator of Sydney Airport, also announced on Thursday that solid passenger growth in 2010 kicked up its annual earnings by 12 percent, resulting to earning before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of $773.3 million in calendar 2010.

Such as the case of Melbourne Airport, MAp Group said in a statement that Chinese visitors boosted its earning in the past year, with Sydney Airport chief executive Russell Balding confirming that their Chinese market grew from 147,148 in 2004 to 282,641 in 2010.

Balding said that the growth transpired on both Australian outbound and Chinese inbound, with the last quarter of 2010 proving as the airport's anchor period as it posted an average of more than 100,000 passengers passing through the terminal daily.

MAp Group chief executive Kerrie Mather said that overall revenue for 2010 jumped by 10.5 percent to $943 million, coming from the $853.2 million earned in 2009, while the operation's retail revenue soared by 10.5 percent in the year, which was largely due to the airport's near eight percent growth in passenger numbers.

Mather said that glowing numbers were achieved through continuous fiscal discipline "as conditions steadily improved through the year following the impact of the global financial crisis in 2009."