European airport trade body ACI Europe has released its air traffic report for April 2024, which reveals that passenger traffic across the European airport network increased by 8.5% in April compared to the same month in 2023. This resulted in volumes standing at just 0.2% below their pre-pandemic (2019) level – essentially a full recovery.
Non-EU+ market in the lead
The non-EU+ market outperformed with passenger traffic expanding by 13.4% over the same month last year, driven by bumper increases reported by airports in Kazakhstan (+150%), Albania (+67%), Uzbekistan (+54%) and those in the larger market of Türkiye (+19%) also growing dynamically.
The non-EU+ market surpassed pre-pandemic (April 2019) levels by +5.6% despite geopolitics resulting in the total loss of passenger traffic at Ukrainian airports and significant decreases at airports in Israel (-42%) and Russia (-22%). Airports in Albania (+261%), Uzbekistan (+171%), Kazakhstan (+83%) and Armenia (+86%) led the bloc’s growth dynamic compared to 2019 volumes.
Significant performance gaps across EU+ market
Meanwhile, the EU+ market saw passenger traffic increase by 7.7% in April compared to April 2023. The best performances came from airports in Estonia (+28%), the Czech Republic (+18%), Slovenia (+17%) and Poland (+17%), while the weakest ones came from those in Sweden (-0.1%), Ireland (+0.6%), Latvia (+1.8%) and Portugal (+2.4%).
The EU market came very close to a full recovery of its pre-pandemic volumes (April 2019) at -1.1%, but with significant performance gaps among national markets. For example, airports in markets relying on leisure and visiting friends and relatives (VFR) demand far exceeded 2019 volumes, including those in Greece (+21.7%), Croatia (+20.9%), Poland (+20.3%), Malta (+18.5%), Iceland (+17.2%), Luxembourg (+17%) and Portugal (+13.6%).
Conversely, airports in Finland (-30.6%), Slovenia (-29.5%), Slovakia (-24.1%) and Sweden (-23.6%) remained the farthest from recovering their pre-pandemic volumes. Among the largest EU+ markets, the best performance also came from airports predominantly relying on leisure and VFR demand with Italy (+13.9%) and Spain (+10.8%) expanding on their pre-pandemic volumes, followed by the UK (-3.9%), France (-6.9%) and further behind Germany (-19.2%).
Data by airport groups
Throughout April 2024, airports welcoming more than 40 million passengers per year (majors), airports welcoming between 25 and 40 million passengers (mega), airports welcoming between 25 and 10 million passengers (large), airports welcoming between 1 million and 10 million passengers per year (medium) and airports welcoming between 1000 and 1 million passengers (small) reported an average change in passenger traffic of -1.6%, +2.6%, -6%, +9.4% and -31.5% compared to their pre-pandemic (April 2019) levels.
Performance variations across airport categories
Passenger traffic at what ACI Europe terms ‘the majors’ expanded by +8.6% in April compared to April 2023 and stood at -1.6% compared to pre-pandemic volumes (April 2019). London Heathrow remained the busiest European airport, followed by Istanbul where passenger traffic was far above pre-pandemic level. Paris-CDG came in the third position, followed by Amsterdam Schiphol and Madrid. Rome-Fiumicino recorded the highest growth compared to April 2023 at +26.6%.
Among the ‘mega’ and ‘large’ airports, the highest increases in April 2024 came from Antalya, Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen, Prague, Munich, Athens and Budapest. ‘Medium’ airports posted the best performance in April 2024 compared to pre-pandemic (April 2019) levels at +9.4%. Airports reporting the highest increases in that category included Zadar, Girona, Tirana, Sarajevo, Chisinau and Erzurum.
As in the past months, larger low-cost bases kept outperforming when compared to pre-pandemic levels (Apr 2019): Memmingen (+63.4%), Beauvais (+63%) Bergamo (+28.6%) and Charleroi (+21.7%).
Conversely, small airports posted the weakest performance with a +4.4% increase in passenger traffic in April compared to the same month last year – and remained -31.5% below their pre-pandemic levels.
For more of the top insights from ACI Europe, read Passenger Terminal World’s exclusive interview with Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, here.