Passenger traffic at European airports has finally exceeded pre-pandemic levels in the first half (H1) of 2024, according to the latest air traffic report from airport trade body Airports Council International (ACI) Europe.
Increasing 9% compared to the same period last year, 0.4% more passengers than in the first half of 2019 passed through Europe’s airports in the first six months of this year. International traffic kept being the main growth driver in H1 (+10.3%), expanding at more than twice the rate of domestic traffic (+4.2%), ACI Europe explained.
“As overall passenger traffic finally made it above 2019 levels over a full 6-month period, our industry has now turned the corner on the pandemic”, said ACI Europe Director General, Olivier Jankovec. “We are in for our best summer ever in terms of passenger traffic, even though the unprecedented global IT outage earlier this month combined with recurrent Air Traffic Management capacity shortages and aircraft delivery delays are all taking a toll on airport traffic.”
Despite the overall recovery to 2019 figures, only 53% of the airports actually made it past pre-pandemic figures in June. “This reflects structural changes in both demand and supply”, noted Jankovec, explaining that leisure, visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and the growing Turkish Airlines have been the driving force of the recovery.
Airports in the EU+ market (EU, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and the UK) saw passenger traffic increase by 9.5% in H1 compared to the same period last year, coming right at their pre-pandemic levels (0%). In the rest of Europe (Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, TĂĽrkiye, Ukraine and Uzbekistan), airports posted an increase of 5.8% in H1 compared to the same period last year, resulting in volumes standing 2.9% above pre-pandemic levels.
In June, the best passenger traffic performances in the EU+ market when compared to pre-pandemic (June 2019) came from airports relying predominantly on leisure and VFR-driven demand: Poland (+24.5%), Greece (+23.9%), Malta (+19.1%), Luxembourg (+16.9%), Portugal (+14.2%) and Croatia (+13.6%). Conversely, airports in Finland (-26.4%), Slovenia (-21.5%), Bulgaria (-20.5%) and Sweden (-19.4%) remained the farthest from a full recovery.
In the rest of Europe, the best June performances came from airports in Albania (+243%) buoyed by ultra-low-cost carriers’ expansion, as well as from those in Uzbekistan (+202%), Armenia (+78%) and Kazakhstan (+67%). Airports in Türkiye (+9.2%) also stood well above their pre-pandemic levels, while those in Israel (-33.4%) continued to report traffic losses due to instability in the region.
The top 5 European airports welcomed a total of 174.6 million passengers in H1 – an increase of +8% over the same period last year and 2% above their pre-pandemic (H1 2019) levels. London Heathrow remained the busiest airport with 8 million passengers in H1 (+7.4% vs. H1 2023 and +2.8% vs. H1 2019), followed by Istanbul, which handled 38.1 million passengers (+6.9% vs. H1 2023 and +18.1% vs. H1 2019).
The Turkish hub was followed by Paris-CDG at 2 million passengers (+4.4% vs. H1 2023 and -8.7% vs. H1 2019), Amsterdam Schiphol with 31.8 million passengers (+11% vs. H1 2023 and -7.9% vs. H1 2019) and Madrid with 31.7 million passengers (+11.3% vs. H1 2023 and +8.3% vs. H1 2019).
Amongst other airports with more than 25 million passengers per year, the best performances in H1 came from Rome Fiumicino which saw passenger volumes expanding by an impressive 26% compared to the same period last year (+9.8% vs H1 2019), Antalya (+19.8% vs. H1 2023 and +7.1% vs. H1 2019), Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen (+16.6% vs. H1 2023 and +18.5% vs. H1 2019) and Athens (+16.1% vs. H1 2023 and +24.5% vs. H1 2019).
Airports that get between 1 and 10 million passengers per year posted the best performance in H1, increasing their passenger traffic by +10.8% when compared to the same period last year and largely exceeding their pre-pandemic levels (+9.4%).
Conversely, airports with less than 1 million yearly passengers posted the weakest performance in H1 with a +5.7% increase in passenger traffic compared to the same period last year and remaining -35.7% below their pre-pandemic levels (H1 2019).
Looking forward, Jankovec noted the importance of the Schengen countries’ readiness for the Entry Exit System, which is planned for November 2025. Issues with the system’s implementation, which has already been postponed multiple times, could lead to “major disruptions”.
