ACI Europe on Friday (20 May) said European airport traffic is likely to come in 22% below pre-pandemic levels this year, up from a previous forecast of -32% last October.

"A full recovery to pre-pandemic volumes is now expected for 2024 rather than 2025," it said.

However, the association said there were three key factors that could impact this recovery – the return of geopolitics, worsening economic conditions and the threat of new Covid variants.

It said these were creating "significant uncertainty and traffic downside risks".

Additionally, it said the recovery was still being largely driven by leisure traffic and efforts by low-cost carriers to ramp up capacity, adding that larger airports were being disproportionately affected by staffing issues and the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“At the moment, the performance of passenger traffic is trending along our high-case optimistic scenario on the back of travel restrictions lifting across many markets and strong summer pent-up demand," said Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe.

"But the history of the past three years suggests caution, especially as we still do not have an established playbook in Europe – let alone globally – on how to deal with future Covid-19 variants when it comes to travel.

"And beyond the immediate operational challenges from staffing issues, there is no escape from rising geopolitical tensions and ‘stagflation’ fears meaning risks for air traffic only go one direction – down.”

‘Investment crunch’

In its full 2022 base case scenario, ACI Europe forecasts European airports will still welcome 540 million fewer passengers than they did in 2019, resulting in a cumulative loss since the beginning of the pandemic of 3.7 billion passengers. This is equivalent to the total passenger growth achieved in the 36 years prior to the pandemic.

"If the associated slump in airport revenues and continued financial weakness are factors behind current operational challenges, sharp inflationary pressures are only adding more challenges for airport investment in sustainability, digitalisation and capacity," said the association.

It further warned: "It is critical governments and regulators see beyond feuding over financial percentage points and ensure that Europe’s airports are able to generate the cash flows and restore the balance sheet strength needed to avoid an airport investment crunch."