The number of commercial flights in 2023 remains below pre-pandemic levels by some 700,000 flights despite the robust recovery, Eurostat has revealed.
According to the EU Office for Statistics, in 2023, 6.3 million commercial flights were recorded, still lagging behind 2019 levels when seven million commercial flights were operated.
Non-scheduled flights, charter flights and other special flights represented 9.2 per cent of all flights in 2023, while the summer months, June, July and August, recorded the highest volume of flights – 10.9, 11.4 and 10.4 per cent, respectively.
Months with the fewest flights were recorded in January and February – around or less than 400,000, respectively.
Amsterdam airport had the highest number of commercial flights in 2023 – a total of 453,000, followed by the Parisian Charles de Gaulle (451,000) in France and Frankfurt/Main Airport in Germany (427,000).
Among the top ten airports with the biggest numbers of flights, the highest shares of non-scheduled flights were recorded in Athina (5.6 per cent) in Greece, Wien (5.1 per cent) in Austria and Madrid (4.7 per cent) in Spain.
In general, air traffic to Europe has improved significantly in 2023, as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has revealed, indicating that demand growth has exceeded 99 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
Air traffic in November 2023 is up by 29.7 per cent compared to the same period in 2022, while compared to the international levels, traffic has recovered to 99.1 per cent of 2019 levels.
Moreover, international air traffic experienced a 26.4 per cent increase compared to the levels observed in November 2019.
We are moving ever closer to surpassing the 2019 peak year for air travel. Economic headwinds are not deterring people from taking to the skies. International travel remains 5.5 per cent below pre-pandemic levels, but that gap is rapidly closing. Domestic markets have been continuously above their pre-pandemic levels since April.
Asia-Pacific Airlines has the highest increase in traffic for November – 63.8 per cent compared to the 14.8 per cent increase noticed among European carriers. While the capacity at Asia-Pacific Airlines increased by 58 per cent and the load factor was 82.6 per cent, European airlines witnessed a rise of 15.2 per cent in capacity and even more of 83.3 per cent in load factor.
