Ryanair heads Europe's top 20 airline groups by pax 2019

In 2019 Ryanair Group regained from Lufthansa Group the title of Europe's biggest airline group by passenger numbers, with a 9.5% increase to 152 million passengers. Lufthansa Group slipped to second place, with 145 million.

IAG remained third, growing by 4.7% to 118.3 million passengers. Air France-KLM was fourth, growing by 2.7% to 104 million.

The next three groups - easyJet (97 million passengers, up 5.9%), Turkish Airlines (74 million, down 1.1%), Aeroflot Group (estimated 61 million, up 9.2%) - also held their 2018 positions.

Wizz Air enjoyed the fastest growth in the top 20, growing by 17.7% to almost 40 million passengers, and jumped over Norwegian (36 million, a fall of 2.8%) into eighth place. Pegasus Airlines entered the top 10 for the first time in spite of shrinking its passenger numbers by 0.3%, to just under 30 million. SAS shrank by 1.0% to slightly further below 30 million, and fell out of the top 10 for the first time.

The collapse of Thomas Cook Group allowed SunExpress and LOT Polish to enter the 2019 ranking in equal 20th place, both on just over 10 million passengers.

This report ranks Europe's top 20 airline groups by passenger numbers in 2019 and also includes a ranking of the top 20 individual airline brands.