Airport traffic posts tepid growth in July

04-Sep-2013

Airports' trade body, ACI EUROPE today released its traffic report for the month of July, posting an underwhelming result for Europe's airports. Following some welcome signs of green shoots during the month of June (passengers +3.4%), today's July figures reveal a less buoyant picture of peak season traffic this year. Overall passenger traffic at European airports in the month of July reported tepid growth of +1.6%. The overall freight traffic increased by +1.2%, while aircraft movements (an indicator of airline capacity) at European airports produced a near-flat result of +0.1% compared with the same month last year.

At EU airports, passenger traffic growth registered a timid increase of just +0.4% while non-EU airport passenger traffic continued to enjoy growth of +6.8%.

Olivier Jankovec, Director General ACI EUROPE commented "These figures, while slightly improving, continue to be disappointing - with the pace of air traffic recovery in the EU being almost anaemic. This reflects modest improvements in consumer and business confidence as well as unemployment recorded for July - and further illustrates the fact that the pace of economic recovery is extremely slow and uneven across the continent."

Airports welcoming more than 25 million passengers per year (Group 1), airports welcoming between 10 and 25 million passengers (Group 2), airports welcoming between 5 and 10 million passengers (Group 3) and airports welcoming less than 5 million passengers per year (Group 4) reported for July 2013 an average increase of +0.5%, +3.2%, +0.4% and +2.5% respectively when compared with July 2012.

Airports that experienced the highest increase in passenger traffic per group, when comparing July 2013 with July 2012, include:

GROUP 1 airports - Moscow SVO (+11.8%), London LHR (+5.5%), Istanbul IST (+4.9%), Antalya (+2.1%) and Amsterdam (+1.9%)

GROUP 2 airports - Istanbul SAW (+18.7%), St Petersburg (+18.1%), Stockholm ARN (+10.2%), Helsinki (+9.2%) and Berlin TXL (+8.7%)

GROUP 3 airports - Bergen (+12.7%), Alicante (+9.5%), Warsaw WAW (+8.7%), Glasgow GLA (+5.3%) and Faro (+4.9%)

GROUP 4 airports - Chambery (+63.3%), Clermont-Ferrand (+23.3%), Tivat (+21.9%), Chita (+21.5%) and Aalesund (+21.0%)

In terms of the year-to-date passenger traffic results at European airports, comparison with the same period in 2012 reveals an average increase of +1.9%, +2.3%, +1.4% and +0.9% respectively, across the 4 traffic groups.

The 'ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Report - July 2013' includes 171 airports in total. These airports represent over 88% of European passenger traffic.