The year 2020 has been a disaster for world tourism, It was a disaster for air passenger traffic, including airports have been affected by declining passenger numbers.
Airports Council International Europe presented figures for 2020 for airports in Europe. According to the ACI Europe report, European airports lost 1.72 billion passengers, a percentage decrease of 70.4% compared to 2019, returning to 1995.
Airports in the European Union had higher losses than non-EU airports in Europe. Thus, EU airports lost 1.32 billion passengers (-73%). Airports outside the European Union fell by 61.9%, the equivalent of 400 million passengers.
EU airports have suffered higher losses than non-EU airports in Europe
The different performance between the EU and non-EU markets became apparent in the second half of the year. While passenger air traffic almost stopped at EU and non-EU airports in Q2 (decreases of -97,3% and -93,3% respectively), losses in T4 were located at -83,8% in EU airports, compared to -63,9% outside EU airports.
Again, this was mainly due to the relative resilience of domestic passenger traffic on the non-EU market (-39,8%) compared to the EU market (-72,9%), although non-EU airports also exceeded those in the EU for international passenger traffic (respectively -78,2% and -86,6%).
In the EU , the limited variations in extreme passenger traffic losses also reflected the size of internal markets and / or the extent of roadblocks and restrictions.
Airports in Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Slovenia and Slovakia most affected
As a result, in Q4, airports in Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Slovenia and Slovakia still saw a 90% decrease in passenger traffic, while German and British airports followed closely -87,9%, respectively. -86,6%.
At the other end, airports in Bulgaria (-69%), France (-78,1%), Greece (-72,1%) and Portugal (-77,2%) slightly exceeded the EU average.
Outside the EU , airports in large markets such as Russia (-44,2%) and Turkey (-60,7%) proved to be the most resilient in T4. While the airports in Iceland (-96,2%) and Georgia (-94,8%) are the most affected.
Europe's largest hubs, London-Heathrow, Paris-CDG, Amsterdam-Schiphol, Frankfurt and Istanbul, have lost more than 250 million passengers. Frankfurt (-73,4%) registered the largest decrease, closely followed by London-Heathrow (-72,7%), Amsterdam-Schiphol (-70,9%), Paris-CDG (-70,8%) and Istanbul (-59,6%).
Aircraft movements from the network of European airports decreased by 58,6% in 2020 compared to the previous year. No wonder that top 10 airports in Europe in 2020 looks very different from 2019.