Airports Council International (ACI) Europe has revealed that passenger traffic in the European airport network increased by 61 per cent in September this year, compared to the same period in 2021.
According to ACI Europe, growth was driven by international passenger traffic of 84 per cent as largely unrestricted cross-border travel led to a boom in leisure travel, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
On the other hand, domestic passenger traffic expanded slower, marking a 14 per cent increase.
Data show that compared to pre-pandemic levels, passenger traffic in September was -12 per cent, which means a significant improvement over the second quarter, which was -17 per cent and the first quarter, with -39 per cent.
“The EU’s market continued to drive the recovery, with passenger traffic at airports in the bloc increasing by +74 per cent in Q3 compared to the same period last year. The best performances came from airports in the UK (+202 per cent), Finland (+194 per cent) and Ireland (+188 per cent) – largely reflecting the fact that Governments in these countries had been slower to ease travel restrictions last year,” the report shows.
When compared to the September 2019 levels, ACI Europe shows that airports in Greece (+4.8 per cent), Luxembourg (+3.3 per cent) and Iceland (+ one per cent) exceeded their pre-pandemic passenger volumes.
Meanwhile, the airports of tourism markets, which include Portugal (-1.8 per cent), Spain (-7.8 per cent), Croatia (-9.3 per cent) and Italy (-11.4 per cent), generally outperformed the airport average of the EU.
At the same time, this includes Romania (-4.8 per cent), Lithuania (-7.6 per cent), Ireland (-ten per cent) and Poland (-11.2 per cent), where the significant increase in the capacity of ultra-cost operators was a major contributor.
On the other hand, the airports that had a slower recovery are France (-14.1 per cent), which posted the best results, followed by the UK (-18.1 per cent) and Germany (-25.9 per cent).
Even airports in Finland (-35.4 per cent), the Czech Republic (-30.9 per cent), Latvia (-28.7 per cent) and Bulgaria (-27.7 per cent) also remained down due to the war in Ukraine.
As for passenger traffic in the rest of the EU, compared to pre-pandemic levels, it remained at -nine per cent. Airports in Albania (+60 per cent), Kosovo (+26.3 per cent), Bosnia and Herzegovina (+23 per cent), North Macedonia (+3.3 per cent) and Montenegro (+0.4 per cent) exceeded their 2019 volumes.
Based on the figures, passenger traffic at the top 5 European airports increased by +79.4 per cent in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, however it remained -16.9 per cent below the levels of 2019.
As one of the busiest European airports, Istanbul was the airport which in September exceeded pre-pandemic levels by + three per cent. Thus, its passenger traffic also increased by almost +56.1 per cent compared to the same period a year ago.
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