Q3 EU airport passenger traffic back in black, but freight still lags behind

05-Nov-2013

European airport trade body, ACI EUROPE this morning released the first comprehensive report of airport traffic performance for Q3 2013. The report includes all scheduled air traffic at Europe's airports, including networks carriers, low cost carriers, charter and others.

The overall passenger traffic at the continent's airports registered an increase of +3.2% during Q3, compared with the same period in 2012. At EU airports passenger traffic increased by +1.8% while non-EU airports led by Turkey, Russia, Iceland and Norway reported dynamic growth of +8.8%.

Overall freight traffic among European airports showed timid growth at +0.9%, while aircraft movements (an indicator of airline capacity) at European airports were almost flat at +0.3%.

Olivier Jankovec, Director General ACI EUROPE commented "European passenger traffic is getting more surefooted, thanks to the improving performance at EU airports which started at the end of the winter. However, the recovery remains quite soft, and generally contrasted between Southern Europe and the rest of the continent. Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus continue to lose passengers, although at a slower pace. As for freight, volumes have also improved, but they still remain below 2010 levels."

Comparing Q3 2013 with the same period in 2012, airports welcoming more than 25 million passengers per year (Group 1), airports welcoming between 10 and 25 million passengers (Group2), airports welcoming between 5 and 10 million passengers (Group 3) and airports welcoming less than 5 million passengers per year (Group 4) reported an average increase of of + 2.6%, +3.9%, +2.6% and +4.2% respectively.

Comparing the month of September with September 2012, reveals the following average increases across the same 4 traffic groups for airports: +2.6%, +3.6%, +2.6% and +4.1% respectively. The airports that experienced the highest increase in passenger traffic per group, when comparing September 2013 with September 2012, include:

GROUP 1 airports - Moscow DME (+10.6%), Antalya (+8.2%), Istanbul IST (+8.0%), Moscow SVO (+5.9%) and Paris ORY (+4.7%)

GROUP 2 airports - Istanbul SAW (+32.1%), St Petersburg (+9.9%), Stockholm ARN (+7.1%), Berlin TXL (+6.4%) and Helsinki (+5.7%)

GROUP 3 airports - Warsaw (+24.9%), Ankara (+16.4%), Alicante (+9.7%), Bergen (+8.6%) and Porto (+8.1%)

GROUP 4 airports - Bucharest BBU (+78.5%), Arad (+58.2%), Rome CIA (+41.4%), Chita (+30.3%) and Skopje (+25.6%)