Greek airports are among the list of European airports that performed the best this August, contributing to the “recovery” of European airports, compared to both the same month last year and the pre-pandemic August, according to the European airports trade body ACI Europe in its report on air traffic in August 2024.
In August, a peak month for air travel, European airports handled more than 250 million passengers, despite multiple headwinds. Passenger traffic across the European airport network increased by 5.6% compared to the same month last year. This resulted in passenger volumes being 2.3% higher than in pre-pandemic August 2019, according to ACI Europe.
Several national markets achieved double-digit growth, compared to pre-pandemic levels in August 2019, including Poland (+25.5%), Luxembourg (25.4%), Iceland (+21.1%), Malta (+19.4%), Greece (+18.7%), Portugal (+14.3%), Italy (+14.2%), Croatia (+13.1%) and Cyprus (+11%).
Meanwhile, Athens airport recorded an increase in passenger traffic of 19.7%, compared to August 2019 and 10.4%, compared to the same month last year.
However, the impact of the war between Russia and Ukraine along with structural market changes and political factors continued to hamper airport recovery in other markets, notably Finland (-27.4%), Slovenia (-21.5%), Sweden (-21.2%), Bulgaria (-20.1%), Germany (-13.4%) and Latvia (-11.1%), according to the agency.
The overall performance was entirely due to international passenger traffic – up 7.1% year-on-year – while domestic passenger numbers declined slightly by 0.2%, reflecting structural changes in demand.
Aircraft movements increased by 3.6% in August across the European airport network compared to the same period last year and came very close to a full recovery from pre-pandemic levels.
However, due to the impact of the military conflicts, airports in Ukraine lost all passenger traffic for 30 months, airports in Russia recorded a 12.9% drop and airports in Israel a 43.5% drop, leaving them well below their pre-pandemic levels.
Airports in the UK (-0.4%) and France (-0.9%) came very close to full recovery, with Heathrow remaining the busiest airport in Europe, ahead of Istanbul airport, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, Siphol in Amsterdam and Frankfurt airport.
ACI Europe director general Olivier Jankovec said: “Europe’s airports welcomed 251.5 million passengers during August, a peak summer month – a feat when you consider the many adversities facing our industry, from escalating geopolitical tensions, much higher air ticket prices and other supply pressures to chronic air traffic capacity management problems. Thus, air travel is an integral part of our European lifestyle.”
Αccording to Jankovec, better policies and regulations are needed, both at EU and national level. At the European level to effectively support and enable decarbonisation of aviation and at the national level since there is the unresolved passenger cap at Dublin Airport or France’s ill-advised plans this week to impose more taxes that will choke off aviation connectivity.