LONDON—Close to half of Europe’s airports have recovered to pre-pandemic levels of business, but the return of traffic is patchy, depending on the airport’s size, traffic type and geographic location.
Major airports are recovering more slowly, while airports in countries close to Ukraine are continuing to feel the disruptive events of the Russia-Ukraine war.
According to Airports Council International (ACI) Europe, passenger traffic continued to recover in the first quarter (Q1) of 2023 across Europe’s airport network, with volumes up 49% compared to the same period last year. That growth somewhat slowed in March at +34%, reflecting the fact that travel restrictions were being lifted during that month last year, and passenger traffic had started to recover.
Q1 passenger traffic was -10.6% below pre-pandemic (Q1 2019) levels. International passenger traffic is driving the recovery and is nearing pre-pandemic levels (-9%), while domestic passenger traffic is lagging (-18.5%). ACI Europe says this points to structural market changes resulting from factors including changing consumer behaviors and modal shifts.
By the end of March, 45% of Europe’s airports had recovered or exceeded their pre-pandemic volumes—an increase from 40% in February.
Those countries that benefit from leisure or blended demand and are served by ULCCs have done the best in restoring traffic, even bettering pre-pandemic levels. For example, airports in Portugal were 15.2% up in Q1 on the same period in 2019; Croatia had risen 12.1% over 2019; and Cyprus exceeded its 2019 figures by 8.4%.
At the other end of the scale, airports in Slovakia were still down 44.9% on 2019 levels, while Slovenia was down 41.2% and the Czech Republic 29.7% down. Germany was down 32.2%, although this figure partly reflects significant industrial action in the country’s aviation sector in Q1 2023.
Among the largest European markets—and aside from the underperformance of German airports—airports in Spain posted the best results at +1.7% compared to Q1 2019, followed by those in Italy (-6.8%), France (-11.4%) and the UK (-12.9%). The UK is still suffering from slow-to-return business traffic.
While airports in Ukraine have lost all their passenger traffic for more than a year, those in Russia were 4.5% greater than their pre-pandemic volumes in Q1 as passenger demand shifted to domestic airports and non-European Union and other Western European destinations. This boosted the performance of airports in Uzbekistan (+112.5%), Kazakhstan (+55.1), Armenia (+37.6%) and Serbia (+26.3%).
Passenger traffic at the top five European airports pre-pandemic grew by 52.4% in Q1 compared to the same period in 2022. However, volumes remained 11.2% below Q1 2019 levels because of lower hub carrier capacity deployment and the still-limited reopening of China.
Among the current top five European airports, Istanbul (+5.9%) and Madrid (0%) were the only ones having recovered their pre-pandemic levels.
London Heathrow, although still 5.7% down on 2019’s levels, re-established itself as the busiest European airport, followed by Istanbul, Paris Charles De Gaulle (-13.2%), Madrid and Amsterdam Schiphol (-20.8%).
The German hubs—Frankfurt (-23.3%) and Munich (-30.1%)—significantly under-performed their peers, with lower LCC penetration and strikes being contributing factors.
Meanwhile, the resilience of leisure demand to inflationary pressures and higher air fares and the reliance on LCC traffic resulted in several other large and capital airports exceeding their pre-pandemic volumes in Q1: Lisbon (+13.9%), Tel Aviv (+14%), Palma de Mallorca (+2.4%), Athens (+2.3%) and Dublin (+1.9%).
These same recovery patterns and market dynamics continued to benefit several large ULCC bases, such as Beauvais, France (+34.3%); Bergamo, Italy (+19.7%); and Charleroi, Belgium (+16%).
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