Airports continue to record solid traffic growth during February

Average passenger traffic in geographical Europe grew by +5.2% during February, compared with the same month last year. While EU airports continued to lead the growth dynamic (+5.5%), the gap with non-EU airports (+4.2%) is narrowing – on the back of a much improved performance by Russian airports and strong increases in Iceland, Ukraine and Georgia. Conversely, passenger traffic is still declining in Turkey, although at a slower pace than in previous months.

In the EU, most of the less mature markets in the Eastern part of the Union posted double digit growth increases in passenger traffic, along with Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta and Portugal. 

While these growth rates are lower than those reported for January, the extra ‘leap year’ day in February 2016 should be taken into consideration. Accordingly, in an adjusted, equal comparison (based on 28 days), passenger traffic across Europe actually rose by +9%, with the EU market growing by +9.3% and the non-EU bloc by +7.9%.

Freight traffic grew by +3.4% (+6.7% adjusted) while aircraft movements were near flat at -0.4% (+3.4% adjusted).

During the month of February, 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 +3.2%, +6.6%, +8.1% and +7.6%.

The airports which reported the highest increases in passenger traffic during February 2017 (compared with February 2016) are as follows:

GROUP 1:     Moscow SVO (+15.4%), Manchester (+11.5%), London Gatwick (+9.9%), Zurich (+6.8%) and Amsterdam (+5.8%)

GROUP 2:     St Petersburg (+27.8%), Warsaw WAW (+26.6%), Lisbon (+20%), Prague (+17.8%) and Berlin SXF (+16.1%)

GROUP 3:     Keflavik (+50.1%), Kiev (+29.8%), Larnaca (+28%), Malta (+25.1%) and Faro (+24.5%)

GROUP 4:    Bucharest BBU (+1,041.9%), Nis (+354.4%), Arad (+133.3%), Mikonos (+113.3%) and Oradea (+111%)

The ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Report – February 2017 includes 235 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.