European airport passenger traffic up 4.3% in May

European airport trade body, ACI EUROPE today released its traffic results for the month of May across the European airport network. The overall passenger traffic growth at Europe’s airports registered a significant increase of +4.3% compared to May 2012.

Many EU airports finally reported improved traffic performance, posting an average increase of +2.8%, while passenger traffic at non-EU airports reported an average increase of +10.7%, when compared with the same month in 2012. However, aircraft movements for the whole of Europe reported a decrease of -1.2%, while freight still remained negative reporting -1.2%.

Airports welcoming more than 25 million passengers per year (Group 1), airports welcoming between 10 and 25million 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 +4.8%, +4.2%, +4.5% and +2.1% respectively when compared with May 2012.

Airports that experienced the highest increases in passenger traffic per group, when comparing May 2013 with May 2012 were:

• GROUP 1 Airports – Istanbul IST (+18.4%), Moscow SVO (+18.3%), Antalya (+14.2%), Moscow DME (+13.6%) & Paris ORY (+9.7%)
• GROUP 2 Airports – Manchester (+10.5%), Berlin TXL (+9.6%), London STN (+9.5%), Lisbon (+9.2%), Dublin (+8.6%)
• GROUP 3 Airports – Ankara (23.6%), Faro (+13.4%), Larnaca (+13.0%), Alicante (+12.5%), Ibiza (+12.4%)
• GROUP 4 Airports – Arad (+3,457.8%), Clermont-Ferrand (+41.4%), Figari (+41.4%), Zadar (+38.8%), Liege (+38.3%)

The ‘ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Report – May 2013’ includes 173 airports in total representing approximately 88% of European air passenger traffic.