• Russian and Turkish airports most resilient - with Istanbul & Moscow hubs replacing Western European hubs as the busiest European airports by Q4
Olivier Jankovec, Director General of
ACI EUROPE commented: "With just 728 million passengers in 2020 compared to 2.4 billion passengers in the previous year,
Europe's airports were back to their traffic levels of 1995. No industry can on its own withstand such a shock. While some States have taken steps to financially support their airports, only €2.2 billion has so far been earmarked for that purpose in
Europe. This is less than 8% of the revenues airports lost last year."
"With further decreases in traffic over the past weeks and no recovery in sight, more needs to be done. Helping out airports is essential to rebuild air connectivity and effectively support local and regional communities and tourism. It is also critical to restore airports' investment capabilities for the future. Without more financial support, investments in decarbonisation, digitalisation and
SESAR are at risk."
EU airports (-73% & 1.32 billion passengers lost) were significantly more impacted than those in the non-
EU bloc (-61.9% & 400 million passengers lost). This is mainly due to the size and relative resilience of domestic markets primarily in
Russia but also
Turkey, combined with less stringent lockdowns and travel restrictions compared to the
EU market.
The distinct performance between the
EU and non-
EU market became apparent in the second half of the year. While both
EU and non-
EU airports saw passenger traffic coming to an almost stand still in Q2 (respectively -97.3% and -93.3%), losses in Q4 stood at -83.8% at
EU airports compared to -63.9% at non-
EU airports. Again, this mainly resulted from the relative resilience of domestic passenger traffic in the non-
EU market (-39.8%) compared to the
EU market (-72.9%), although non-
EU airports also outperformed
EU ones for international passenger traffic (respectively -78.2% and -86.6%).
Within the
EU, limited variations in extreme passenger traffic losses also reflected the size of domestic markets and/or the extent of lockdowns and travel restrictions.
Outside the
EU, airports in the larger Russian (-44.2%) and Turkish (-60.7%) markets proved the most resilient in Q4, with those in
Iceland (-96.2%) and
Georgia (-94.8%) being the most impacted.
All segments of the airport industry were almost equally impacted in 2020 in terms of passenger traffic losses, from the Majors (top 5 European airports) at -71.3% to smaller regionals at -69.4%.
Top 5 major hubs unrecognisable
By Q4, only Istanbul remained in the top league. The Turkish hub had by then become the busiest European airport, followed by Istanbul-Sabiha Gocken (n.2), Moscow-
Sheremetyevo (n.3), Moscow-
Domodedovo (n.4) and Moscow-
Vnukovo (n.5).
Freight recovering by year end
Freight traffic at
Europe's airports fell by -11.8% in 2020 compared to the previous year, with the loss almost equally distributed between
EU airports (-12.1%) and non-
EU airports (-9.9%). The recovery in freight traffic accelerated as of last September, with December seeing a marginally positive result (+0%).
Amongst the top 10 European airports for freight, volume increases were registered only by
Liège (+23%),
Leipzig-Halle (+12%),
Luxembourg (+6%) and Koln-
Bonn (+5%).
Aircraft movements
Aircraft movements across the European airport network decreased by -58.6% in 2020 compared to the previous year.