Airports Council International (ACI) has revealed that passenger traffic at Europe’s airports has declined by 20 per cent since the first reports of the Omicron variant virus occurred.
In addition, in the three-week period, since the first report for the first case of Omicron record in South Africa on November 24, in addition to passenger traffic, the load factors on flights to and from EU member states airports have dropped by 66 per cent (week 6) to 54 per cent (week 49).
However, the past week (week 50), which corresponds with the start of the holidays, witnessed passenger traffic increasing by nine per cent over the previous week, with load factors re-gaining two points at 56 per cent.
“Business travel has been the first to recede, now followed by leisure travel given the extreme uncertainty and prospects of more restrictions both on travel and local life. Last week’s data shows that only ‘Visiting Family and Relatives’ travel is somehow holding up for now, as Europeans are craving getting together and reuniting with loved ones for Christmas,” Olivier Jankovec, Director General of ACI EUROPE said, also pointing out that travel ban imposed on Southern African countries have impacted traffic levels.
He also pointed out that the holiday season will affect the passenger traffic in the first quarter of 2022, but it depends on the governments’ restrictions on what scale the traffic will increase. The Omicron variant is rapidly becoming the dominant variant across Europe, which according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), makes travel restrictions unsuccessful from a public health perspective and detrimental economically and socially.
On the other hand, although the passenger traffic in EU member states has improved in November compared to the preceding one by 1.5 per cent – it lags by 35.2 per cent compared to the pre-pandemic levels.
In addition, while the European airports witnessed recovering premises over November, from -38.1 per cent to -41.2 per cent in October, both months compared to pre-pandemic levels – the recovery was less evident compared globally, especially due to the Omicron virus variant impacting the performance in the last days of November.
Furthermore, airports in the rest of Europe also experienced dropping rates in passenger traffic during November, reaching -19 per cent of the pre-pandemic levels, compared to October when performance rates stood at -17.4 per cent.
However, lifting restrictions for North Americans during November has impacted the main European airports greatly, as they witnessed a performance recovery of four per cent (from -45.6 per cent in October).
Istanbul airport has remained the busiest European airport at -30.4 per cent of its pre-pandemic passenger traffic, followed by Heathrow in London with -50.8 per cent. Paris-CDG came second with -40.8 per cent, followed by Madrid at -35 per cent, Amsterdam-Schiphol (-41.8 per cent and Frankfurt (-42.8 per cent).
While the passenger performance saw minor improvements, the freight traffic in November stood at 8.5 per cent above pre-pandemic stats, with EU+ area airports reaching a 10.5 per cent increase and outperforming those in the rest of Europe, which stood at -4.3 per cent. However, the aircraft movements in November dropped by -25.1 per cent compared to 2019 stats, with a notable difference between airports in the EU+ area (-26.8 per cent) and those in the rest of Europe (-14.8 per cent).
