Traffic at Europe’s airports increased only marginally in June despite a resumption of international travel between most EU states during the month
Airports association ACI Europe reported an pick-up of just five percentage points in the shortfall in monthly passenger traffic year on year compared with May.
It blamed the failure of governments to align the lifting of border restrictions across Europe.
ACI Europe director general Olivier Jankovec said: “The fact that EU and Schengen states have not yet managed to coordinate and align their travel policies does not help.
“It is not conducive to restoring confidence in travel and tourism in the middle of the peak summer season.”
The slow recovery led ACI Europe to revise down its forecast for a recovery in air travel, saying: “It’s a slower pace than we had hoped.”
The association warned that many airports, especially regional airports, would need financial aid to survive.
ACI Europe now forecasts a return to 2019 levels of traffic only by 2024, having forecast in May that demand would return to former levels by 2023.
Passenger traffic across Europe’s airports was down 93% on 2019 in June compared with 98% down in May, marking “only a marginal traffic increase”.
The total number of passengers in June rose to 16.8 million, compared with 240 million in June 2019.
The improvement on May reflected the progressive lifting of EU travel restrictions, with daily passenger volumes tripling month on month from 267,000 on June 1 to 757,000 on June 30.
Jankovec reported early data for July showed a similar trajectory and said: “The recovery in passenger traffic is proceeding at a slower pace than we had hoped.
“Initial data for July indicates we are likely to recover only 19% of last year’s traffic rather than the 30% we had forecast.
“This is down to the incomplete lifting of travel restrictions within the EU/Schengen area and the UK, as well as the permanence of travel bans for most other countries.”
ACI Europe now predicts Europe’s airports will handle two-thirds less traffic this year than in 2019 or almost 1.6 billion fewer passengers.
It warned this would likely result in a revenue loss to airports of more than €32 billion or 67% of total revenues last year.
The association also warned a muted recovery is likely to produce “significant diseconomies of scale” for airports with passenger volumes trailing the number of flights due to “generally low load factors”.
It pointed out airports’ operating costs are driven by aircraft movements, while three quarters of airport revenues come from passengers through retail revenue and passenger charges.
Jankovec said: “The financial situation of airports is not significantly improving – with some making more losses now [than] prior to the restart.”
He warned that dependence on summer revenues, the end of staff furlough schemes and “fierce airline pressure on airport charges” would mean “liquidity will remain a concern through the winter” and said: “Many airports, especially smaller regional airports, will need financial relief.”