ACI Europe reported (10-Oct-2019) EU airport passenger traffic grew 3.5% year-on-year in Aug-2019, mostly driven by international traffic (+3.9%) rather than domestic traffic (+1.3%). Passenger traffic expanded by 3.2% at non-EU airports, entirely driven by international traffic (+8%) as domestic traffic decreased sharply (-5%).
- EU airport highlights:
- Airports in Austria and Latvia achieved double digit growth, while Italy and Malta (+8.1%), Croatia (+7.8%), Luxembourg (+7.4%), Finland (+7.3%) and Portugal (+7.1%) significantly outperformed the EU average;
- Airports in Bulgaria (-5.4%), Sweden (-3.3%), Cyprus (+0.7%), the Netherlands (+0.2%), Germany (+1.2%) and the UK (+1.6%) were all well under the EU average;
- Non-EU airports:
- Airports in Ukraine (+25.1%), North Macedonia (+17.8%), Albania (+13%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (+12.1%) and Serbia (+12%) led the non-EU markets. Russian airports saw passenger traffic growing by +4.9% and those in Turkey by +2.9%, Turkey recovering from its traffic slump in Jul-2019 (-3.5%);
- Airports in Iceland (-29.4%) were hit by the continued fallout triggered by the bankruptcy of WOW Air, while Georgia (-15.3%) also suffered severe setbacks and Norway was nearly flat (-0.6%). [more - original PR]