Europe airports' April passengers up 5%, freight up 3.9%
European airport trade association, ACI EUROPE today released its traffic report for April 2018, during which average passenger traffic in geographical Europe grew by +5% compared with the same month last year.
As has occurred in previous months, the non-EU market led the growth dynamic, holding fast at +10.4%, on the back of Turkish airports increasing their passenger traffic by an impressive +13.9%. Gains were especially strong at airports in Georgia (+30.5%), Ukraine (+20.4%) as well as in the smaller markets of FYROM (+17.3%), Montenegro (+15.5%) and Albania (+11.5%).
Meanwhile, passenger traffic growth in the EU market increased by +3.4% - a notable deceleration compared with earlier months (Q1: +6.2%). This was mainly due to the combination of labour disruptions, the continued impact of the bankrupticies of Monarch and Air Berlin, stronger tourism demand to Turkey and Northern Africa impacting some EU leisure airports - as well as the Easter holiday period starting earlier (in March) when compared to last year.
Airports in the Eastern and Southern parts of the bloc along with Finland and Luxembourg significantly outperformed this average. Conversely, airports in the UK, France and Germany posted the weakest results. Accordingly, the following capital city airports all registered double-digit growth in passenger traffic: Tallinn (+32.4%), Bratislava (+26.9%), Ljubljana (+19.4%), Riga (+16.3%), Vilnius (+15.3%), Warsaw (+14.8%), Athens (13.7%), Budapest (+13.6%), Malta (+11.4%), Helsinki (+11.9%) and Luxembourg (+11.7%).
The Majors (top 5 European airports) saw passenger growth weakening to +2.4% compared to +9.6% in Q1. The Air France strikes had an impact on Paris-CDG (-3.5%) – so far, the airport has lost more than 700.000 passengers due to industrial action at the airline. There were also lower passenger numbers at London-Heathrow (-2.2%). Istanbul-Atatürk (+10.7%) kept posting the best performance amongst the league, followed by Frankfurt (+5.8%) and Amsterdam-Schiphol (+3.0%).
Overall, passenger growth was the most dynamic at smaller & regional airports (with less than 5 mppa: +7.6%), with examples including: Batumi (+63.3%), Rostov (+21.3%), Bodrum (+20.7%) and Kristiansund (+12.6%) in the non EU market, as well as Bourgas (+135.9%), Kefallinia (+78.6%), Poznan (+43.1%), Corfou (+38.2%), Ostend (+30.8%), Turku (+26.5%), Clermont-Ferrand (+28.6%), La Rochelle (+21.9%), Memmingerberg (+21.9%), Linz (+20.4%), Wroclaw (+17.2%), Genova (+15.8%) and Paphos (+15.2%) in the EU.
Freight traffic retained its recent robust growth trend during April at +3.9%. Aircraft movements were up +4.3% - increasing by +3.2% in the EU market and by +7.5% in the non-EU bloc.
During the month of April, 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 +4.1%, +5.1%, +6.4% and +7.6%.
The airports that reported the highest increases in passenger traffic during April 2018 (compared with April 2017) are as follows:
GROUP 1: Antalya AYT (+18.7%), Moscow SVO (+14.8%), Istanbul SAW (+11.7%), Istanbul IST (+10.7%) and Lisbon (+9.1%)
GROUP 2: Ankara (+30.1%), Kiev (+21.8%), Moscow VKO (+19.4%), Warsaw WAW (+14.8%) and Athens (+13.7%)
GROUP 3: Naples (+25.8%), Seville (+22.5%), Krakow (+19.2%), Valencia (+18.7%) and Riga (+16.3%)
GROUP 4: Foggia (+169.7%), Bourgas (+135.9%), Kefallinia (+78.6%), Batumi (+63.3%) and Poznan (+43.1%)
The 'ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Report – April 2018 includes 243 airports in total representing more than 88% of European air passenger traffic.
ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Reports are unique in that they are the only ones to include all types of airline passenger flights to, from and within Europe: full service, low cost, charter and others.
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