In the first half of this year, small and regional European airports reached passenger traffic levels exceeding the prepandemic figures. Meanwhile, on average, the large, top 5 European airports are still below their 2019 levels, but the busy Summer traffic is still ongoing and airlines are already posting good financial results, said eToro analyst for Romania, Bogdan Maioreanu.
Passenger traffic across the European airport network increased by almost 29% in the first half of this year compared with the same period of 2022, according to the Airports Council International Europe. The passenger volume is still at -7.7% compared with 2019 but it improved from -11% in January to -6% in June.
Not all airports recovered the same. The mega-airports in Top 5 in Europe are still lagging behind the European average, with close to -9%, below 2019. London Heathrow remained the busiest hub with 37 million passengers handled. It is followed by Istanbul, which was the only mega-airport in Europe that already had more passengers (+10.4%) than before the pandemic, with 35.6 million. It was followed by Paris and Amsterdam. Frankfurt only displaced Madrid (28.5 million in the half-year) from fifth place in June.
Far from these figures Bucharest Otopeni airport reached almost 6.8 million passengers in the first 6 months of 2023 and is followed by Cluj with 1.48 million and Iasi 1 million passengers. 11 million people transited the Romanian airports in the first half of 2023 exceeding prepandemic figures by 5.4%.
In the section of large airports, Lisbon, Athens and Palma de Mallorca recorded increases over pre-crisis levels – airports that were also attractive tourist destinations and saw strong demand for transcontinental flights. But the most spectacular increases were in airports in popular vacation destinations and relying on low-cost carriers: Trapani (+163%) and Perugia (+137%) in Italy, Tirana (105%), Kutaisi (+82%) in Georgia, Zaragoza (+57%). This gives an idea where tourists are going.
For investors, the good airport figures are starting to be translated also in the P&L reports of the airlines. Lufthansa, the biggest European airline group, posted a Q2 revenue of 9.4 billion euro, exceeding the previous year’s figure by around 17% (previous year: €8.0bn). Between January and June, the airlines that are part of the Lufthansa group welcomed more than 55 million passengers on board, an increase of 30% compared with the same period in 2022. Investors are seeing opportunities in investing in airlines, Lufthansa being the 6-th most held stock by German investors on eToro platform at the end of last quarter.
WizzAir also posted good financial results, reporting a 61.1 million euros net profit in the three months ended June more than the 51.5 million euros average estimates of analysts. This travel boom was also reflected in EasyJet and Ryanair financial results that beat estimates.
