Riding on the heels of much better passenger traffic this year, Sydney Airport said on Friday that its terminal operations garnered a double-digit spike in earnings for the first half of calendar 2010, which about 12.9 percent higher from the previous corresponding period last year.

Sydney Airport chief executive Russell Balding said that its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the six months leading to June 30 was $367.23, noting that the figures excluded the company's non-recurring expenses and actually registered much better numbers from its passenger growth.

The airport management said that traffic on the terminal saw an increased of 9.4 percent in the first half of the year as it attributed the strong performance to solid Australian outbound demand and growth in inbound markets, coming from passengers in New Zealand, the US, China and Korea.

MAp Group chief executive Kerrie Mather is happy for the strong performance delivered by Sydney Airport, stressing that "this excellent performance was driven by double digit growth in domestic capacity and materially higher load factors on international routes."

The facility is 74 percent owned and operated by MAp, which was the former Macquarie Group satellite fund that morphed into a standalone entity in October last year.

MAp also reported that the terminal's revenue jumped by 11.9 percent to $452.62 million, while its retail revenue and aeronautical revenue soared by 12.2 percent and 17.6 percent respectively.