European airports saw the best monthly passenger performance in August since the start of the pandemic.
Numbers remained 12% down on the same month in pre-Covid 2019 but improved from levels achieved in July and June, according to airport trade body ACI Europe.
The improvement was largely driven by a 70% surge in international travel as restrictions to cross-border travel both within Europe and to most external markets were lifted.
The best performances came from airports in the UK (+178%), Finland (+175%) and Ireland (+147%), reflecting the fact that governments in these countries had been slower to ease travel restrictions last year.
However, domestic passenger traffic grew at a much slower pace of just 8%.
Istanbul was the busiest European airport, handling 6.8 million passengers in August and was the only major European hub seeing volumes exceed pre-pandemic levels by 1%.
Heathrow came second with 6.04 million passengers, closely followed by Paris-CDG with 6.02 million.
Volumes increased by 170.5% and 69.5% respectively for the two hubs compared to the same month last year but remained 20% below August 2019 levels.
Capacity restrictions limited passenger traffic to 5.33 million at Amsterdam Schiphol and to 5.19 million at Frankfurt.
The performance of selected other large airports in August reflected a summer recovery still mainly driven by intra-European and transatlantic routes, and dominated by leisure demand, according to ACI Europe.
Palma (-2.8%), Lisbon (-5.8%), Athens (-6.1%), Stansted (-9.3%) and Dublin (-10.2%) came closest to a full recovery of their pre-pandemic passenger volumes in the month.
Director general Olivier Jankovec said: “August’s snapshot shows us how polarised the situation is becoming for Europe’s airports as they are dominated by externalities.
“On the one hand, the public appetite to travel is undimmed – as the holiday surge shows. On the other hand we have the reality of war.
“The simple fact of geography is going to have a heavy hand in our members’ fortunes for some time to come it seems.”