No good news for European airport industry in July traffic report

The latest traffic figures for Europe’s airports released today reveal a disappointing summer season in traffic terms. Overall passenger traffic at European airports in the month of July reported growth of just +1.1%. The overall freight traffic among European airports declined by -3.2% in the same period, while aircraft movements (an indicator of airline capacity) at European airports decreased by -0.8%.

The divide within Europe remains, with passenger traffic growth at EU airports registering a totally flat result (0.0%) while non-EU airport passenger traffic continued to enjoy diminishing growth of +6.1%.

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 June 2012 an average increase of +0.8%, +1.1%, +2.2% and +0.6% respectively when compared with June 2011.

In terms of the year-to-date passenger traffic results at European airports, comparison with the same period in 2011 reveals an average increase of +2.5%, +2.5%, +2.3% and +1.6% respectively, across the 4 traffic groups.

Airports that experienced the highest increase in passenger traffic per group, when comparing July 2012 with July 2011, include:

GROUP 1 airports – Istanbul IST (+13.4%), Moscow DME (+7.8%), Barcelona (+6.0%), Frankfurt (+3.7%) and Amsterdam (+1.3%)

GROUP 2 airports – Moscow SVO (+13.0%), Nice (+8.8%), Berlin TXL (+10.0%), Oslo (+5.1%) and Düsseldorf (+4.6%)

GROUP 3 airports – Bucharest OTP (+57.5%), Charleroi (+17.4%), Marseille (+14.9%), Toulouse (+12.4%) and Girona (+10.8%)

GROUP 4 airports – Arad (+5,854.8%), Zadar (+39.5%), Sandefjord (+33.4%), Chambery (+31.5%) and Vilnius (+27.1%)

The ‘ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Report – July 2012’ includes 170 airports in total. These airports represent over 88% of European passenger traffic.