ACI Europe’s latest monthly airport traffic report -for August- confirms that any improvement in the recovery of air traffic is likely to be slow. The overall passenger traffic at European airports decreased by -4.5% in August 2009 compared with August 2008. The overall freight traffic among European airports decreased -11.7% in August 2009 when compared with the corresponding month in 2008. The overall figure for movements at European airports decreased -7.8% in August 2009 when compared with August 2008…
ACI Europe’s latest monthly airport traffic report -for August- confirms that any improvement in the recovery of air traffic is likely to be slow. The overall passenger traffic at European airports decreased by -4.5% in August 2009 compared with August 2008. The overall freight traffic among European airports decreased -11.7% in August 2009 when compared with the corresponding month in 2008. The overall figure for movements at European airports decreased -7.8% in August 2009 when compared with August 2008.
ACI Europe Director General Olivier Jankovec said “Fewer airports are recording decreases in passenger traffic: 70% this month, down from peaks in previous months reaching 93%. This is mainly due to low cost carriers helping to generate passenger growth at some locations. For freight, there are timid signs of recovery for the second month in a row. However, full recovery is not yet in sight for European airports.”
The accumulated figure for passenger traffic January to August 2009 decreased by -8.1% compared with the corresponding period 2008. The accumulated figure for freight traffic during January to August decreased by -21.1% and movements decreased by -9.2% during the corresponding period when compared with 2008.
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 decrease of -3.1%, -6.0%, -4.2% and -2.8% respectively when compared with August 2008. The same comparison of August 2009 with August 2007 demonstrates an average decrease of -3.8%, -6.6%, -3.3% and -2.0% respectively.
Rare examples of airports that experienced an increase in passenger traffic per group, when comparing August 2009 with August 2008, include:
- Group 1 airports – London LHR (+0.2%)
- Group 2 airports – Athens (+2.3%), Moscow SVO (+0.8%) Dusseldorf (+0.4%) and Geneva (+0.3%)
- Group 3 airports – Milan BGY (+17.3%), Marseille (+5.8%), Edinburgh (+4.8%) and Moscow VKO (+1.4%)
- Group 4 airports – Charleroi (+43.1%), Bari (+21.1%), Cagliari (+20.5%) and Bologna (+14.1%)
The ‘ACI Europe Airport Traffic Report – August 2009’ includes 108 airports in total.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
