EUROPE. Passenger traffic at Europe’s airports posted an increase of +5.4% year-on-year in May, according to the latest figures from Airports Council International (ACI) Europe. Aircraft movements at European airports increased by +1.5% in May compared with May 2009.
ACI Europe Director General Olivier Jankovec said: “These latest traffic figures are a welcome piece of good news – and the summer months should hopefully continue this positive trend. However, passenger traffic still remains more than -10% below May 2008.
“On top of that, the comparatively minor increase in aircraft movements shows that airlines are clearly focusing on yield recovery, while remaining hesitant about opening new passenger routes or increasing frequencies. There is still lot of ground to make up, if we are to get back the passenger volumes we had before the global crisis.”
The accumulated figure for passenger traffic from January to May 2010 increased by +1.5% compared with the corresponding period in 2009.
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 an average increase of +3.6%, +5.5%, +5.9% and +7.0% respectively when compared with May 2009.
However, the same comparison of May 2010 with May 2008 demonstrates an average decrease of -4.9%, -6.8%, -6.2% and -2.5% respectively, reflecting the fact that there is still a lot of traffic to recover.
Examples of airports that experienced the highest increase in passenger traffic per group, when comparing May 2010 with May 2009, include:
Group 1 airports – Munich (+8.0%), Istanbul (+7.4%), Frankfurt (+7.1%) and Amsterdam (+5.3%)
Group 2 airports – Antalya (+27.8%), Moscow Domodedovo (+19.8%), Copenhagen (+12.0%) and Hamburg (+11.7%)
Group 3 airports РIstanbul Sabiha G̦kcen (+98.2%), Ankara (+24.7%), Moscow Vnukovo (+23.6%) and Berlin Schoenefeld (+11.9%)
Group 4 airports – Ohrid (+67.6%), Brindisi (+52.4%), Charleroi (+43.5%) and Vilnius (+22.3%).
The ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Report for May 2010 includes 117 airports in total. These airports represent nearly 80% of total European passenger traffic.
