Could the Covid-19 crisis be becoming a bad memory for air traffic?

According to Eurocontrol, in Europe, the latter returned in 2022 to 83% of its 2019 level, before the health crisis.

A rebound deemed "solid" by the air traffic monitoring body.

Eurocontrol, on the other hand, pushed back by a year, to 2025, its estimate of a return to pre-Covid figures, citing, in a presentation on its website, the weakness of the economic recovery, inflation and the risk of continuation of the Russian-led war in Ukraine.

European airlines and airports welcomed around 2 billion passengers last year, compared to 2.42 billion in 2019, with “strong disparities” depending on the country and the carriers.

These figures include all departures and all arrivals on European soil.

Strong disparities

Thus, Germany only regained 75% of its pre-crisis traffic in 2022, France 86%, Spain 91% and Portugal 96%.

Traffic in Greece, on the other hand, reached 101% of the volume recorded three years earlier, and 137% in Albania.

On the airline side, it is the low cost companies that have emerged strengthened from the crisis, regaining 85% of their traffic in 2019, compared to 75% for conventional carriers.

Ryanair consolidated its first place in Europe, performing 109% of its flights last year three years earlier, like Volotea.

Air France flights represented 80% of the 2019 level, those of Lufthansa 72%, a little better than British Airways (71%), according to Eurocontrol.

“In 2022, European aviation weathered the storm,” the organization summed up.

After the Omicron variant at the start of the year and then the invasion of Ukraine, "traffic still recovered to 86% (of the 2019 level) in May and remained until the end of the year in a range narrow from 86% to 88%,” he points out.

Eurocontrol predicts that the number of annual flights in its area of ​​competence will reach 92% of the number of 2019 this year, but foresees a "difficult" year, the challenge being to limit delays, a scourge which affected many travelers especially at the beginning. in the summer of 2022. As a result in particular of a labor shortage at the airports, the number of punctual flights arriving and departing reached 72% and 66% of the totals respectively, i.e. 6 or 7 points percentage less than in 2019.

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