Passenger numbers using European airports rose by almost 7% in January, new figures show.
The increase reported by European airport trade body ACI Europe was described as reflecting “continued resilience in demand — for now”.
The year-on-year rise of 6.9% was driven by an 8.3% increase in international passengers.
However, domestic air travel was up by just 2.7% and remained 12.5% down on pre-pandemic 2019 levels, described as a “reflection of structural aviation market changes”.
Major airports handing more than 40 million passengers a year collectively grew their passenger traffic by 7% in January compared to the same month last year.
Istanbul was top, serving 6.4 million passengers, ahed of Heathrow with 6.3 million, up 5.3% over January 2024. Paris CDC was in third place with 5.3 million followed by Madrid with 5.2 million and Amsterdam with 4.8 million.
Regional and small airports serving less than one million passengers, delivered the most contrasted results in January, achieving 19.7% growth but still faring the worst when compared to 2019 volumes (-31.9%).
“Their continued fragility in the new aviation market dynamics is also laid bare in the percent of fully recovered airports within their traffic category. For small airports, less than half managed to fully turn the corner on the impact of the Covid‑19 pandemic (46%),” there airports trade body said.