The air traffic report for April 2023 released today by European airport trade body Aci Europe shows passenger traffic made further gains towards a full recovery, but with wide performance divergence across the continent.

Passenger traffic in the European airport network grew by +21.1% in April compared to the same month last year. Considering that travel restrictions had largely been eased in Europe by that time last year, such increase is significant. As a result, when compared to pre-pandemic (April 2019) levels, volumes in April this year stood at -7.6% - a further improvement over the preceding months (Q1 was at -10.6%).

Freight traffic across the European airport network decreased by -7.8% in April compared to the same month last year, and by -10.5% compared to pre-pandemic (April 2019) levels.

Amongst the top 10 European airport for freight traffic, the best performances when compared to pre-pandemic volumes came from: Istanbul (+36%), Milan-MXP (+21%), Liège (+17%), Madrid (+14%) and both Luxembourg and Koln-Bonn (+4%).

Aircraft movements increased by +11% across the European airport network compared to the same month last year, and stood at -9.9% compared to pre-pandemic levels.

The integral version of the report (four pages) is attached to this AVIONEWS.