Passenger traffic growth at 9.6% for Europe’s airports during July

European airport trade body, ACI EUROPE today released its air traffic report for July. The report is the only industry report including all types of civil aviation passenger flights: full service, low cost and charter. It reveals that during the peak month of July, passenger traffic at Europe’s airports grew by an impressive average of +9.6% – in line with the dynamics of the previous months.

This performance is mainly attributable to the continued momentum in economic expansion, especially in the Eurozone, as well as contained oil prices and the return of stronger demand for air services in Russia and Turkey.

The EU market stayed on course, reporting a +7.6% increase in passenger traffic during the month – slightly less than in June (+8.8%). Eastern EU countries remained the most dynamic, with almost all of them posting double digit growth – along with Cyprus, Finland, Luxembourg, Malta, and Portugal.

Meanwhile, passenger traffic in the Non-EU market grew by +17.5% – further improving compared to June (+15.1%). July saw Turkey not only recovering from last year’s traffic losses but also further expanding, boosted by strong demand from Russia.

The performance of the Majors (top 5 European airports) continued to improve during July, coming in at +6.3%. Istanbul-Atatürk (+17.6%) led the league, followed by Amsterdam-Schiphol (+5.6%), Paris-CDG (+5.4%), Frankfurt (+4.4%) and capacity constrained London-Heathrow (+1.2%).

Freight traffic across the European airport network remained consistent with the previous month, coming in at +10.5%. Aircraft movements exceeded expectations with growth of +5.2% – the highest expansion in years.

During July, 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 adjustment +6.1%, +14.2%, +10.2% and +11.3%.

The airports that reported the highest increases in passenger traffic during July are as follows:
GROUP 1: Moscow SVO (+22.9%), Istanbul IST (+17.6%), Istanbul SAW (+12.7%), Oslo (+9.4%) and Barcelona-El Prat (+8.0%)
GROUP 2: Antalya (+64.2%), Ankara (+42.2%), Warsaw WAW (24.7%), St Petersburg (+23.6%) and Birmingham (+17.6%)
GROUP 3: Naples (+29%), Keflavik (+22.2%), Kiev (+20.2%), Toulouse-Blagnac (+19.7%) and Riga (+16.2%)
GROUP 4: Rovaniemi (+15,321.1%), Grenoble (+4,763.3%), Bucharest BBU (+588.2%), Nis (+421.2%) and Kaunas (236.2%)

The ‘ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Report – July 2017’ includes 247 airports in total representing more than 88% of European air passenger traffic.

Brussels, 13 September 2017