European passenger traffic still up, but negative freight trend worsens

The overall passenger traffic at European airports increased by +7.0% in September 2011 compared with September 2010. However, the recently established trend in decreasing freight traffic among European airports worsened, registering -3.8% in September 2011 when compared with the corresponding month in 2010. The overall figure for movements at European airports increased +3.0% in September 2011 when compared with September 2010.

Olivier Jankovec, Director General, ACI EUROPE commented “September has seen the gap between passenger and freight traffic only get bigger (a gap of 10.8%) with freight now stuck in a sustained downward trend which looks very similar to what we experienced back in 2008. For now, passenger traffic continues to defy the weakening GDP growth here in Europe coming with record unemployment levels and hardening fiscal austerity. Meanwhile, freight traffic perfectly reflects these developments, along with the softer growth we are seeing in Asia’s emerged economies – in particular China.”

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/decrease of +6.5%, +7.7%, +7.5% and +6.4% respectively when compared with September 2010. The same comparison of September 2011 with September 2009 demonstrates an average increase of +14.1%, +17.8%, +17.3% and +16.7% respectively.

Q3 figures report +5.8% growth in passenger traffic and +2.7% growth in movements, but a decrease of -2.2% in freight, compared with Q3 2010. In terms of the year-to-date, compared to the same period in 2010, European airports have seen an overall increase of +8.0% in passenger traffic, but a weaker increase in freight +1.9% and movements of +4.7%.

Examples of airports that experienced the highest increase in passenger traffic per group, when comparing September 2011 with September 2010, include:

Group 1 airports – Istanbul IST (+22.5%), Barcelona (+17.7%), Amsterdam (+10.2%) and Paris ORY (+9.3%)

Group 2 airports – Moscow DME (+20.5%), Istanbul SAW (+17.5%), Moscow SVO (+16.2%) and Antalya (+15.6%)

Group 3 airports – Venice (+34.8%), Tenerife TFS (+24.4%), Warsaw (+18.3%) and Kiev (+17.7%)

Group 4 airports – Ohrid (+198.1%), Tallinn (+37.1%), Skellefteå (+36.2%) and Vilnius (+36.0%)

The ‘ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Report – September 2011’ includes 170 airports in total. These airports represent about 88% of European passenger traffic.

Source: ACI EUROPE