Greek Airports Mark Strong Passenger Traffic in 2022, Says ACI Europe

Greek airports were among the top performers in Europe in terms of 2022 passenger traffic, found airport trade body ACI Europe (Airports Council International Europe) this week.

More specifically, according to ACI’s full year 2022 traffic report, the global airport industry may be leaving the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic behind.

Overall, passenger traffic in Europe in 2022 increased by 98 percent but was still down by 21 percent on Covid levels while airports welcomed nearly 2 billion passengers.

EU airports meanwhile saw passenger traffic rise by 122 percent in 2022 compared to the previous year.

Of Europe’s airports, only 27 percent recovered their 2019 passenger volumes in 2022 while 90 percent of those were smaller and regional airports. Among these, airports in Greece came closest to fully recovering passenger traffic in 2022 down by 1.9 percent over 2019 levels, followed by airports in Portugal (-5.8 percent) and in Luxembourg (-6.9 percent).

Heraklion Airport, Crete, Greece.

Indicatively, in 2022, Greek airports posting the best performance in passenger traffic for the full year compared to 2019 were those of Athens (-11.2 percent), Rhodes (+6.5 percent), Heraklion (+1.7 percent), and Santorini (+25.6 percent).

According to a Eurocontrol study released last month, traffic across Greece’s airports managed to exceed pre-Covid 2019 levels in 2022 and despite the challenges remain resilient and among the Top 4 best performing in Europe.

Source: @ACI Europe.

A previous ACI Europe study also found that passenger traffic through airports in Greece exceeded pre-Covid levels in the third quarter (Q3) of 2022 by 4.8 percent demonstrating a strong dynamic.

Overall, the Top 5 European airports in 2022 were those of Istanbul, London Heathrow, Paris CDG, Amsterdam Schiphol and Madrid.

The best performing larger airports in Europe were airports in Spain (-11.4 percent), Italy (-17.9 percent) and France (-18.8 percent).

On the downside, the worst performers below the EU average were airports in the UK (-24.8 percent) and in Germany (-34.9 percent).

ACI Europe Director General Olivier Jankovec. Photo source: @ACI Europe.

“This is not yet a full recovery. Europe’s airports were still short 500 million passengers in 2022 compared to where they stood before the pandemic hit. And there were significant gaps in traffic performance between hubs and smaller regional airports as well as across national markets,” said ACI Europe Director General Olivier Jankovec commenting on the figures.

Looking ahead, Jankovec said there was “still a lot of uncertainty about 2023, not least because of geopolitical tensions… but the  traffic outlook is getting better thanks to demand headwinds easing somewhat with the reopening of China, recession fears for Europe subsiding and inflation softening”.

Busiest in 2022 were the airports of Istanbul, welcoming 64.3 million passengers, London Heathrow (61.6 million passengers), Paris-CDG (57.5 million passengers), Amsterdam-Schiphol (52.5 million passengers), Madrid (50.6 million passengers). Overall, passenger traffic at major hubs rose by 114 percent in 2022 compared to the previous year but remained 22.6 percent below 2019 levels.