Passenger Traffic Up 4.8% At European Airports During May

European airport trade body, ACI Europe recently released its traffic results for the month of May across the European airport network, revealing a robust year-on-year increase of 4.8 percent in passenger traffic compared to May 2013.

The ACI EUROPE Airport Traffic Report – May 2014 includes 190 airports in total representing approximately 88 percent of European air passenger traffic.

EU airports showed an increase averaging 4.4 percent, while passenger traffic at non-EU airports increased 6.4 percent, when compared with the same month last year. These results show that the gap between the “two speed Europe” seen over the past 3 years, is narrowing – a reflection of continued economic recovery in the Eurozone.

Aircraft movements for the whole of Europe reported growth of 3.2 percent, while freight traffic posted a notable increase of 6.3 percent. Combined, these figures show the continuation of a generally solid expansion of air traffic volumes in Europe – with aviation once again demonstrating its role as facilitator of commerce, tourism and direct & indirect employment growth.

Airports that experienced the highest increases in passenger traffic per group, when comparing May 2014 with May 2013 were:

GROUP 1 (airports welcoming more than 25 million passengers per year): Antalya (+9.2%), Istanbul IST (+7.8%), Moscow DME (+6.7%), London LGW (+6.5%) and Moscow SVO (+5.9%)
GROUP 2 (airports welcoming between 10 and 25 million passengers): Milan MXP (+35.1%), Istanbul SAW (+27.7%), Athens ATH (+18.5%), Brussels (+16.1%) and Lisbon (+12.1%)
GROUP 3 (airports welcoming between 5 and 10 million passengers): Ibiza (+10.4%), Porto (+9.5%), Lanzarote (+8.7%), Naples (+8.6%) and Tenerife TFS (+8.2%)
GROUP 4 (airports welcoming less than 5 million passengers per year): Bucharest BBU (+136.9%), Chambery (+111.2%), Santorini (+42.6%), Belgrade (+27.5%) and Skopje (+24.7%)

The above-mentioned groups of airports reported an average adjustment of +4.2%, +8.3%, -0.4% and +5.8% respectively when compared with May 2013.