Europe’s airports exceed pre-pandemic passenger traffic in 2024 with +4% growth forecast in 2025

EUROPE. Passenger traffic at Europe’s airports exceeded 2.5 billion in 2024, a rise of +7.3% year-on-year, with volumes edging +1.8% ahead of pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

The growth was driven by international passenger traffic, up +8.8% on 2023, with domestic passenger traffic up +2.5% year-on-year but still -6.3% below pre-pandemic levels.

ACI Europe said the figures pointed to “structural aviation market changes, including a partial modal shift to rail, strong cross-border mobility within the EU Single Market, and fast-growing demand in emerging markets outside the EU”.

ACI Europe Director General Olivier Jankovec said: “Europe’s airports welcomed an additional 200 million passengers last year, with many surpassing their previous historic records. This was achieved despite much inflated air fares, continued supply pressures, mostly tepid economic growth and geopolitical tensions. That clearly speaks volumes about how consumers are now prioritising experiences and travel in particular.”

“But 2024 also confirmed major structural post-Covid shifts, with leisure & Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) demand and Low-Cost Carriers largely defining traffic performance – along with airline consolidation, changing air connectivity dynamics and geopolitics. This means that beyond our positive headline results, nearly half of Europe’s airports remained below their pre-pandemic traffic levels last year. We are now in a multi-speed European airport market where competitive pressures just keep rising.”

Jankovec added: “Looking at the months ahead, we expect demand for air travel to remain resilient – defying fragile consumer confidence and generally sluggish European economies. We are thus forecasting a +4% growth in passenger traffic for 2025 – but we will need to keep that forecast under review, considering the overwhelming global political and economic uncertainties. For now, downside traffic risks mainly relate to airlines’ fleet management woes, ATM capacity shortages, ill-advised aviation policies – and, of course, geopolitics.”

London Heathrow retained its position as Europe’s busiest airport in 2024, welcoming 83.9 million passengers. This represented an increase of +5.9% over the previous year, allowing the hub to surpass its 2019 levels by +3.7%.

Istanbul was second with 80.1 million passengers. While its growth somewhat moderated in 2024 (+5.3%) compared to the preceding year due to engine maintenance issues at its hub carrier, the Turkish hub’s passenger traffic stood at an impressive +16.9% above pre-pandemic levels.

Paris Charles de Gaulle held third position with 70.3 million passengers. The French hub faced headwinds with the Olympic Games limiting traffic growth at +4.3% over 2023 – and remained at -7.7% below pre-pandemic levels.

Amsterdam Schiphol welcomed 66.8 million passengers thanks to a +8% increase over 2023, remaining at -6.8% below 2019. The Dutch hub was closely followed by Madrid, taking fifth position with 66.1 million passengers – a +9.9% increase over 2023 and also +7.2% above its pre-pandemic volumes.

Aside from these top five airports, Rome Fiumicino’s performance was noteworthy, with passenger traffic increasing by +20.7% over 2023 – and +12.3% over pre-pandemic 2019.

Multi-speed market

Airports in the EU+ market saw passenger traffic increasing by +7.8% in 2024 when compared to the previous year, outperforming those in the rest of Europe (+5.2%), where the impact of geopolitics was more acute – hitting airports in Israel (-33.3%), Russia (-13.5%) and Ukraine (no traffic).

The best performing EU+ markets were those in the eastern part of the bloc, where the propensity to fly keeps converging with more mature markets, as well as those in the South relying on inbound tourism: Hungary and Czechia (+18.9%), Estonia (+18%), Poland (+15.6%), Malta (+14.8%), Croatia (+13.7%), Italy (+11.0%) and Greece (+10.1%).

In the rest of Europe, airports in Albania (+47.5%), Moldova (+46.0%), Uzbekistan (+36.6%), Bosnia & Herzegovina (+33.8%) and Georgia (+23.9%) posted impressive growth.

When compared to pre-Covid (2019) levels, 2024 performance gaps in passenger traffic were stark, again reflecting changed market dynamics and the continued impact of geopolitics:

• Airports in 20 national markets have still not recovered their pre-pandemic levels, including war-affected Ukraine (-100%) and Israel (-38.9%), along with Finland (-24.9%) and Sweden (-23.1%).
• At the other end of the spectrum, a number of fast-emerging aviation markets far exceeded their pre-pandemic levels – with Albania (+220.8%) and Uzbekistan (+185.9%) in the lead, followed by Kazakhstan (+74.7%), Kosovo (+72.1%), Armenia (+66.3%) and Azerbaijan (+59.9%).
• Amongst the largest aviation markets, Türkiye (+23.1%), Italy (+17.0%) and Spain (+13.0%) were well above their pre-pandemic levels – unlike the UK (-0.1%), France (-3.0%) and Germany (-16.6%).
• Meanwhile, in the EU+ market, the best performances came from Iceland (+24.2%), Malta (+22.5%), Greece and Poland (+22.1%), Portugal (+17%) and Croatia (+16.6%).

By size, among airports with 25-40 million passengers, the best performances came from Athens (+13.1% vs. 2023 | +24.5% vs. 2019), Munich (+12.2% vs. 2023 | -13.3% vs. 2019), Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen (+11.8% vs. 2023 | +17% vs. 2019), Copenhagen (+11.7% vs. 2023 | -1.1% vs. 2019) and Milan Malpensa (+10.9% vs. 2023 | +0.2% vs. 2019).

Among large and medium-sized airports (1 to 25 million passengers), those serving popular tourism destinations and relying on VFR demand generally posted the best performances – including: Samarkand (+36.6% vs. 2023 | +186% vs. 2019), Olbia (+18.4% vs. 2023 | +31% vs. 2019), Heraklion (+18% vs. 2023 | +18.2% vs. 2019), Krakow (+17.8% vs. 2023 | +31.7% vs. 2019), Alicante (+16.8% vs. 2023 | +22.2% vs. 2019), Wroclaw (+15% vs. 2023 | +27.6% vs. 2019), Catania (+15% vs. 2023 | +20.8% vs. 2019) and Malaga (+11.6% vs. 2023 | +25.6% vs. 2019).

The largest continental Low-Cost Carrier bases also kept outperforming: Paris Beauvais (+15.7% vs. 2013 | +64.6% vs. 2019), Memmingen (+14.8% vs. 2023 | +88.6% vs. 2019), Charleroi (+11.8.% vs. 2023 | +27.7% vs. 2019) and Bergamo (+8.6% vs. 2023 | +25.2% vs. 2019).

Meanwhile, passenger traffic at small airports (under 1 million passengers) in 2024 grew at the slowest pace (+5%) amongst the different segments of the airport industry – and remained -34.5% below their pre-pandemic volumes.