The August peak month for air travel saw European airports handle more than 250 million passengers despite multiple headwinds.
\nPassenger traffic across the European airport network increased by 5.6% compared to the same month last year
\nThis resulted in passenger volumes standing 2.3% above their pre-pandemic level in August 2019, according to European airport trade body ACI Europe.
\nAirports in the UK (-0.4%) and France (-0.9%) came very close to a full recovery, with Heathrow remaining as the busiest airport in Europe ahead of Istanbul, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam Schiphol and Frankfurt.
\nThe overall performance was solely driven by international passenger traffic \u2013 up 7.1% year-on-year \u2013 while domestic numbers registered a slight decrease of 0.2%, reflecting structural changes in demand.
\nAircraft movements increased by 3.6% in August across the European airport network over the same period last year and came very close to a full recovery compared to pre-pandemic levels.
\nHowever, the impact of military conflicts have seen airports in Ukraine lose all passenger traffic for 30 months; those in Russia down 12.9% and Israel down 43.5%, standing well below their pre-pandemic levels.
\nACI Europe director general Olivier Jankovec said: \u201cEurope\u2019s airports welcomed 251.5 million passengers through their doors during the peak summer month of August \u2013 quite a feat considering the many headwinds our industry keeps facing, from escalating geopolitical tensions, much increased airfares and other supply pressures to chronic air traffic management capacity issues.
\n\u201cIf anything, that speaks volumes about the fact that air travel is an intrinsic part of our European way of life.
\n\u201cThat in turn calls for better policies and regulations. This is much needed at EU level \u2013 to effectively support and enable aviation decarbonisation, but also at national level \u2013 just think about the still unresolved passenger cap at Dublin airport or this week\u2019s ill-advised plans by France to suffocate air connectivity under more taxes.\u201d
\nMany national markets achieved double digit growth when compared to their pre-pandemic August 2019 levels, 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%).
\nBut the impact of the war between Russia and Ukraine along with structural market changes and policy factors kept hampering the recovery of airports in other markets, in particular Finland (-27.4%), Slovenia (-21.5%), Sweden (-21.2%), Bulgaria (-20.1%), Germany (-13.4%) and Latvia (-11.1%), according to the organisation.- Travel Weekly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The August peak month for air travel saw European airports handle 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 standing 2.3% above their pre-pandemic level in August 2019, according to European airport trade …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":null,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"default","_twitter_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type":"default","_pinterest_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"default","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":null,"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[92,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-airports","category-featured-en"],"yoast_head":"\n