EUROPE. The continuing weak performance of EU airports was the principal reason behind a -0.2% dip in passenger traffic at Europe’s airports in February. That’s according to ACI Europe, which reported the figures today.
EU airports posted an average decrease of -2.8% in the month, compared to February 2012, while passenger traffic at non-EU airports reported an average +10.4% growth. Aircraft movements for the whole of Europe reported a decrease of -5.4%, while freight plunged back into negative territory, down by -6.5%.
It should be noted that traffic results from February 2012 benefited from the extra “˜leap year’ day. If the reported figures are adjusted to take into account the leap year distortion, the key figures for February would see overall European passenger growth of +3.3%, with the EU reporting +0.7% and non-EU reporting +14.3%.
How the February results compare to previous years |
Airports welcoming more than 25 million passengers per year (Group 1), airports welcoming between 10 and 25million 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 of +1.2%, -1.0%, +1.6% and -5.1% respectively when compared with February 2012.
Airports that experienced the highest increases in passenger traffic per group, when comparing February 2013 with February 2012 were:
Group 1 Airports – Istanbul Atatürk (+26.5%), Moscow Domodedovo (+16.6%), Moscow Sheremetyevo (+9.4%), Antalya (+3.1%) and London Heathrow (+1.0%)
Group 2 Airports – Istanbul Sabiha Gökcen (+17.7%), St Petersburg (+11.3%), Nice (+8.1%), Berlin Tegel (+5.1%) and Geneva (+2.9%)
Group 3 Airports – Bucharest (+53.5%), Izmir (+18.2%), Budapest (+15.7%), Ankara (+15.3%) and Warsaw (+13.4%)
Group 4 Airports – Varna (+24,489.6%), Arad (+176.1%), Chita (+57.2%), Vilnius (+32.4%) and Podgorica (+23.8%).
The ACI Europe Airport Traffic Report – February 2013 includes 170 airports in total representing approximately 88% of European air passenger traffic.
Country by country breakdown of the February traffic results from ACI |