Olivier Jankovec, director general of Airports Council International (ACI), said the expansion of ultra-low cost carriers – as well as strong leisure travel demand – had contributed to a significant rebound over the past six months, although not to pre-Covid heights.

“2023 is not 2019,” said Jankovec. “There are significant variations in performance across national markets, and volumes still remain below pre-pandemic levels for more than half (52%) of Europe’s airports.”

Data from ACI Europe reveals international traffic has grown at twice the rate of domestic traffic, increasing by 32.2% during the first half of 2023 compared with 16.6% for domestic. 

Airports in the rest of ACI’s European zone, which includes countries outside the EU such as parts of the Balkans, as well as Israel and Turkey, have come closest to staging a full pre-pandemic recovery, while airports in the EU+ market, which includes the UK and Switzerland, are still lagging behind.

In June, Greek airports exceeded pre-Covid levels after traffic increased by 14.2%, followed by airports in Iceland and Luxembourg, which grew by 9.3% and 8.7% respectively.

In the rest of Europe market, the expansion of ultra-low cost carriers has fuelled new passenger traffic records for airports in Albania, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, major markets such as Spain, the UK and France were still down on 2019 levels, by 2.8%, 6% and 8.3% respectively. 

According to Jankovec, even though demand has remained “extremely resilient” despite inflationary pressures, things could worsen post-summer. “But, looking ahead and past the peak summer months, we do see significant downside risks and much uncertainty,” Jankovec added, positively.

“These include the prospect of deteriorating macro-economics for the Eurozone and the UK as well as initial signals that discretionary spending might start decreasing and that pandemic-savings buffers are exhausted.”