European airports struggle to claw back passengers; reductions at 56% of airports in 2023 vs 2019
An intriguing presentation by Airports Council International (ACI) at a recent airport conference in Europe is examined in this report, together with some further research undertaken by CAPA - Centre for Aviation.
It reveals what the airport sector would prefer not to acknowledge in what was supposed to be a post-pandemic recovery year: namely, that more than half of European airports that are members of ACI-Europe experienced a continuing shortfall in passenger traffic in 2023 compared to the benchmark year of 2019.
The CAPA - Centre for Aviation research, which measures the Top 5 European airports by passenger numbers against three smaller airports in each of their countries, suggests that in most cases it is, perhaps surprisingly, the primary gateway/hub airports that are struggling to regain even the pre-pandemic status quo, while small regional and especially low cost airports are (in the main) doing quite well.
There are, at the very least, pointers here as to how the air travel business will continue to develop in Europe in the next few years.
- ACI presentation on European airport passenger statistics reveals some worrying trends and some positive ones.
- Majority of European airports fail to grow passenger traffic in 2023 compared to pre-pandemic benchmark year of 2019.
- International traffic in Europe is growing much faster than domestic.
- Low cost carriers continue to gain ground, both in passengers flown and future capacity.
- CAPA - Centre for Aviation comparisons undertaken as a result of this presentation reveal that it is smaller, regional - and especially budget-oriented - airports that are growing in a sample analysis.
- In all but one (anomalous) case, and even in Spain, where tourism is surging again, primary hub airports were flat, or worse, in 2023.
A proportion of 56% of European airports fail to exceed 2019 passenger totals in 2023
ACI Europe's Head of Economics and Competition, Michael Stanton-Geddes, revealed recently at the Routes Europe conference in Aarhus, Denmark, that only 44% of European airports exceeded their 2019 passenger traffic levels in 2023 - despite the total passenger volume across the region's airport network recovering to 95% of pre-pandemic levels.
So, more than half of Europe's most significant airports, those that are members of ACI Europe, failed to reach pre-pandemic levels in a year in which there were high expectations for a rebound as a philosophy of 'revenge travel' set in across the world.
Clearly there are winners and losers here.
There were 2.3 billion passengers at Europe's airports in 2023, and passenger traffic was up by 19% compared to 2022, which also left it standing at -5.3% below the 2019 level.
International traffic grew at twice the pace of domestic
The increase was very much driven by international passenger traffic (+21%), which grew at almost twice the pace of domestic passenger traffic (+11.7%), with airports in the EU+ market (+19%) outperforming those in the Rest of Europe (+16%). (For definitions, see the end of this report).
'Rest of Europe' category heavily influenced by conflict
Arguably the Rest of Europe's is a false figure, certainly not representative of the norm, as it includes war zones such as Ukraine and Israel and a country where international travel is restricted accordingly (Russia), in addition to numerous others that could be caught up in these conflicts.
Again, arguably, a three-point difference between the two markets suggests that passenger growth would be higher in 'Rest of Europe' under more 'normal' circumstances.
Significant performance gaps
So while traffic overall is definitely recovering compared to 2019, as shown in the chart below, and the expectation for 2024/5 is still justifiably high, the European airport market is characterised by significant performance gaps: while many airports achieved absolute passenger traffic records, a large majority still lagged behind their pre-pandemic volumes.
ACI Europe: passenger traffic and freight, 2020-2024
Mr Stanton-Geddes added that the region's market had become more international, with intra-European capacity expected to decrease by approximately 1.9% in summer 2024 compared to 2019, while traffic out of the region will increase by 7%.
ACI Europe: seat capacity from European airports
Comparing summer 2024 to 2023, the increase in intra-European capacity is 4.2%, compared to 7.8% for extra-European capacity, so that trend is becoming more notable still.
And the chart below demonstrates the large increase recorded in Russia from 2019 to 2024 (+48%, far more than might be expected under the circumstances); also Albania and Uzbekistan, in both cases close to +230%. Not unreasonably it is referred to as a 'structural shift'.
ACI Europe: passenger traffic, structural shift in traffic flows, Feb-2024 compared with 2019
Most capacity increases from low cost carriers
Mr Stanton-Geddes also noted that capacity increases had continued to come mainly from low cost carriers (LCCs), although they do not have it all their own way.
Although Ryanair has increased capacity by 38.4% in summer 2024 compared to 2019, and Wizz Air by 48.4%, three airlines - easyJet, Norwegian and TUIfly, which is principally a charter airline - all implemented capacity reductions.
Meanwhile, although SAS Scandinavian Airlines had an almost 20% capacity reduction in that period and Lufthansa, operating in a difficult environment, witnessed one of -8.5%, the reduction at IAG and Air France was only the same as that of easyJet. Turkish Airlines actually grew capacity by 13.5% as it continues to take on the Middle East hub airlines on their own 'turf'.
ACI Europe: capacity growth is from low cost carriers
Although there are many other interesting facets of this presentation - such as the increase in length of intra-European flights by 7.5% (which "suggests a shift away from domestic travel to longer, short haul leisure travel") and the decline in regional jets impacting smaller gauge operations at regional airports (the share of intra-European flights using regional jets is expected to be approximately 5% in 2024, compared with 7% in 2019, with an increase in narrowbody share from 91% to 94%) - the real talking point is how many airports put through fewer passengers in 2023 than they did in 2019.
CAPA comparison between airports in five countries that have the busiest airports reveals some surprising variations
So which are those airports?
There are too many to investigate in detail here, so to get a flavour CAPA - Centre for Aviation has looked at the Top Five European Airports by passenger numbers in 2023 and then compared their performance in line with how CAPA - Centre for Aviation segregates airports in its annual awards (which take place each year in November).
So the categories are the mega gateway airports (30m+ passengers per annum); then sub-primary/mid ranking airports (10-30 mppa); and finally, regional airports (1-10 mppa).
Representative samples were taken from the other two categories, with two having contrasting characteristics, for each country.
Those 'Top Five airports' were (in order): London Heathrow; Istanbul; Paris Charles de Gaulle; Amsterdam Schiphol and Madrid.
Surprisingly, Frankfurt dropped out of the Top Five in 2023, but it is not really that surprising given the difficult operating circumstances in Germany, which were aired in Germany aviation recovery lags Europe. Higher passenger tax will not help, a CAPA - Centre for Aviation report from Jan-2024.
So, for example, in the case of London Heathrow comparisons are made with other UK airports in those categories, and making allowance for geographical variety in their location and ownership.
(NB. The exception is The Netherlands, where there are only five commercial airports in total and none in the 10-30 mppa category, so three of them are from the 1-10 mppa category).
Comparison of airports: passenger traffic 2019 vs. passenger traffic 2023, percentage change and notes
|
Airport |
Pax traffic 2019 (millions) |
Pax traffic 2023 (millions) |
+/- (%) |
Notes |
|
|
(Top 5 Apt) London Heathrow |
80.9 |
79.2 |
(-2.1) |
||
|
29.4 |
28.1 |
(-4.6) |
|||
|
5.2 |
4.8 |
(-8.3) |
|||
|
0.8 |
0.95 |
+18.7 |
Percentage of all airports with improvement, 2019-2023, is 25% |
||
|
(Top 5 Apt) Istanbul |
52.0 |
76.2 |
+46.5 |
Statistics skewed - IST only opened in Oct-2018 |
|
|
Ankara Esenboga |
13.7 |
11.9 |
(-15.1) |
||
|
Bodrum Milas |
4.3 |
4.1 |
(-4.8) |
||
|
1.1 |
0.9 |
(-22.2) |
Percentage of all airports with improvement, 2019-2023, is 25% |
||
|
(Top 5 Apt Paris Ch de Gaulle) |
76.1 |
67.4 |
(-12.9) |
||
|
14.5 |
14.1 |
(-2.8) |
|||
|
7.2 |
6.5 |
(-10.8) |
|||
|
4.0 |
5.6 |
+40.0 |
(Acknowledged as a 'low cost' airport). Percentage of all airports with improvement, 2019-2023, is 25% |
||
|
71.7 |
61.9 |
(-15.8) |
|||
|
6.8 |
6.9 |
+1.5 |
|||
|
2.1 |
2.2 |
+4.8% |
|||
|
0.43 |
0.22 |
(-5.45) |
(Predominantly a freight airport). Percentage of all airports with improvement, 2019-2023, is 50% |
||
|
(Top 5 Airport) Madrid |
61.7 |
60.2 |
(-2.43) |
||
|
Málaga |
19.9 |
22.3 |
+12.1 |
||
|
5.9 |
6.3 |
+6.8 |
|||
|
2.9 |
3.5 |
+20.7 |
Percentage of all airports with improvement, 2019-2023, is 75% |
||
Some interesting conclusions might be drawn from these tables - above and beyond those presented by ACI.
Overall, taking these five sample countries into account, the percentage of airports that improved total passenger traffic in 2023 over 2019 is 40%, in line with the ACI findings.
But there some large variations.
Smaller airports across most of the countries recorded the traffic gains
Of the seven airports (out of 20) which declared a traffic increase between those years, all but two of them (Istanbul and Málaga) are in the 1-10 mppa category.
Istanbul is an anomaly as far as this table goes, as it only opened in Oct-2018, and in 2019 it was still building up traffic from the closure of Istanbul Atatürk Airport in Apr-2019. Ergo, the 46% increase in 2023 at one of Europe's biggest airports is only to be expected.
Spain influenced by resurgence in tourism
In the case of Málaga - as one of Spain's premier incoming vacation airports it benefitted from the huge gains in tourism in Spain since the COVID-19 pandemic began to fade.
Tourist visitor numbers to Spain grew by 19% in 2023, and by 2% compared to 2019, so Málaga is in fact well ahead of the general tourist trend, by 10 percentage points.
That tourist-based turnaround can be extrapolated to almost all the Spanish airports in the survey with Bilbao - essentially an industrial city, but with growing tourist interest - showing an 8% increase over 2019 and Santiago de Compostela, a religious city in the northeast of Spain, showing a whopping 20% gain.
Spain is the highest scoring of the countries in the traffic increase stakes, with 75% of the airports showing (large) gains - the single exception being Madrid's Barajas Airport, the country's busiest by some margin, where there was a -2.4% decline.
And indeed, that is the case with all the Top 5 gateway/hub airports by country with the single exception of Istanbul, all of them still with less passengers than in 2019, and with those losses as high as -15% (Amsterdam), although that might be influenced by the continuing threat of potential flight capping there from Nov-2024.
'Low cost' airports performing strongest of all
What is even more notable is the growth at small, regional, and usually low cost-oriented airports, such as Bournemouth, UK (+18%); Paris Beauvais (which is over 100km north of Paris and as much a regional airport for north-central France, including Rouen and Amiens) (+40%); also Rotterdam and Eindhoven, both with small gains.
It would be an exaggeration to say that the recovery continues solely at these secondary level airports, but the chart for capacity growth for low cost carriers above might prove to be the most significant one of all.
A similar situation appears to be the case elsewhere
As this report is published, a CAPA - Centre for Aviation news report says that in Canada, the Quebec City Jean Lesage International Airport (JLIA) handled 1.7 million passengers during 2023, which was an increase of 43.8% year-on-year but a decline of 6% compared to 2019 pre-pandemic traffic levels. The airport also projected passenger traffic would "probably not return to 2019 levels until 2025 or even 2026, with 2024 expected to be a stable year".
The geo-economic-political situation in Canada is different from that in Europe, but JLIA is a standard airport for that country, with 67% capacity on full service carriers, the remainder mainly regional airlines, and with just 5% on LCCs.
That suggests a similar scenario is unfolding in North America, and that - despite all the claims in the industry that a return to 'normality' will characterise 2024 - it may be 2025 or 2026 before it can claim to have achieved that for all participants... and that was actually the original forecast when the COVID-19 pandemic first struck.
Report Definitions:
'EU+ Market' - EU, EEA, Switzerland and the UK.
'Rest of Europe' - Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
NB. Routes, like CAPA - Centre for Aviation, is a member of the Aviation Week Network Group under the umbrella of Informa plc.