Air passenger traffic up in Europe in April

By Diyar Guldogan

ANKARA (AA) - Air passenger traffic in Europe rose 5 percent year-on-year in April, an airport authority said on Monday.

"As has occurred in previous months, the non-EU market led the growth dynamic, holding fast at 10.4 percent, on the back of Turkish airports increasing their passenger traffic by an impressive 13.9 percent," Airports Council International (ACI) Europe said in a statement.

Air passenger traffic in the EU was also on the rise with 3.4 percent in April 2018, compared with earlier months.

"This was mainly due to the combination of labor disruptions, the continued impact of the bankrupticies of Monarch and Air Berlin, stronger tourism demand to Turkey and Northern Africa impacting some EU leisure airports - as well as the Easter holiday period starting earlier (in March) when compared to last year," according to the report.

ACI Europe said that passenger traffic in the top five European airports saw passenger growth weakening to 2.4 percent compared to 9.6 percent in Q1.

"The Air France strikes had an impact on Paris-CDG (-3.5 percent) – so far, the airport has lost more than 700.000 passengers due to industrial action at the airline.

"There were also lower passenger numbers at London-Heathrow (-2.2 percent). Istanbul-Ataturk (+10.7 percent) kept posting the best performance amongst the league, followed by Frankfurt (+5.8 percent) and Amsterdam-Schiphol (+3.0 percent)," it added.

ACI Europe also revealed that freight traffic kept its upward trend, rising 3.9 percent year-on-year in April.

The ACI Europe airport traffic report includes 243 airports in total, representing more than 88 percent of European air passenger traffic.