The Airports Council International (ACI), the association that brings together the management companies of European airports, has recently communicated the data on air traffic recorded during 2022. The number of transited travellers has reached 1.94 billion, a volume that almost doubled compared to the previous year (+98%).

This performance confirms the recovery in travel demand in the post-pandemic period. However, despite the recovery, the passenger traffic volume is still -21% lower than what was recorded in 2019. When compared with this figure, ACI reported that only 27% of European airports have fully recovered the passenger volume transited before the outbreak of the pandemic.

Separate discussion for cargo traffic. Indeed, the pandemic has increased the volume of air cargo transported through the European airport network. Having said that, after the records of 2020 and 2021, in 2022 air cargo volumes decreased by -5% compared to the previous year (-8% towards non-European airports). A trend influenced by the war in Ukraine and the bottlenecks in global supply chains.

The integral version of the report for the Full Year 2022 and December 2022 (four pages) is attached to this AVIONEWS.