Heathrow's supremacy and Fiumicino's redemption: all the numbers of European airports in 2023

There are 2.3 billion passengers who have passed through the European airports throughout 2023. This is a figure that puts a smile on the face of the entire continental air transport, which records a 19% increase over the previous year, but still lags behind pre-Covid levels (-5.4% compared to 2019).

By 2022, passengers in Europe had stopped at 1.94 billion, amounting to -21% compared with what was recorded in 2019. The results were released as every year by Aci Europe, the association representing European airports.

Top ten major hubs

In 2023, however, London Heathrow takes back the scepter of Europe's busiest airport, surpassing Istanbul, which posted record growth last year.

The London airport welcomed 79.2 million passengers with an increase of 28.5% than in 2022.Overall during the year there were nearly 20 million more passengers than the 61 in the previous 12 months). Numbers that benefited from Heathrow's large role as a hub for the transatlantic routes.

Istanbul descends thus in second place with 76 million passengers (+18.3% compared to last year when it had reached 64 million pax). The Turkish hub boasted the better performance compared to its pre-pandemic (2019) volumes, which it far exceeded (+11%). In fact, in 2019, Istanbul was the fifth busiest European airport.

Paris Charles de Gaulle retains third position with 67.4 million passengers (+17.3%) but still remains far from pre-pandemic numbers (11.5%). The French hub precedes KLM's hub, Amsterdam-Schiphol, approaching 62 million passengers. (+17.9% over 2022 and -13.7% over 2019).

The top five large European airports close with Madrid Barajas (60.2 million passengers and +18.9% compared to 2022). The Iberian hub's role in transatlantic traffic allowed it to outpace Frankfurt again in 2023 (59.4 million passengers, still steady at -15.9% compared to 2019).

Olivier Jankovec, director general of Aci Europe, said, "This robust growth has resulted in European airports welcoming 2.3 billion passengers-an impressive achievement considering inflationary pressures and rising airfares. This is a testament to the priority people are giving to travel by supporting the value and importance of air connectivity."

Fiumicino's growth

The hub of Ita Airways, Rome Fiumicino, ranks "only" ninth with 40.5 million passengers. Although it remains at -7% compared to pre Covid; Fiumicino posted an astounding +38% of passengers compared to the previous year: a result that sees it as the best airport (among large hubs) for annual growth over 2022.

More than 11 million more passengers landed or took off from the capital's airport in 2023, so Fiumicino made it into the top ten.

The Leonardo da Vinci is preceded by. Barcelona and London Gatwick reaching 49.8 and 40.9 million pax respectively.

Closing out the top ten is Istanbul's second largest airport, Sabiha Gökçen, located in the Asian part of the Turkish capital (37 million).

Major European differences

In general, however, the increase in passengers throughout the year was driven byl international traffic of passengers (+21%), which grew at almost twice the rate of the national increase (+11.7%).

But there is no shortage of differences between individual states and geographic areas. The best results were recorded by the airports of Portugal (+12.2%), Greece (+12.1%), Iceland (+6.9%), Malta (+6.7%) and Poland (+4.5%).

Northern Europe continues to suffer, however, with the negative results of Finland (-29.6%), Germany (-22.4%) and Sweden (-21%).

Spain is the only country (among large markets) to have recovered and surpassed pre-Covid results with +3%; while Italy came close to breaking even (-2%).

Several situations induced by wars in Russia, Ukraine and Israel. In the first case it was neighboring countries that benefited (catching precisely the prohibited traffic to and from Russia).

The traffic of Uzbekistan (+110%), Armenia (+66%) and Kazakhstan (+51%) has grown tremendously in the past twelve months. Stuck at the post, of course, is the Ukrainian one (-100%); while Israel (-12%) suddenly plummeted, the result of the flight stop in the last quarter of 2013 (-63%).

"For the current year we expect a +7.2% increase in passenger traffic compared to 2023, which should bring us to +1.4% in total compared to pre-pandemic volumes," Jankovec said.

The slow recovery of major hubs

Returning to the major hubs, Aci Europe reports that at the top 5 airports in the ranking, passenger traffic is Increased by 20.8% from the previous year, amounting to about 58 million more passengers.

A good result, not enough, however, to make up for the in full the legacy companies. These, in fact, still remain below the 2019 level by 6.5 percentage points; mainly due to continued weakness in the Asian market, the slow recovery of corporate travel, and capacity constraints imposed by the respective hubs.

In contrast, more leisure airports with a greater presence of low-cost carriers made impressive recoveries compared to pre-Covid: Athens (+10.1%), Lisbon (+7.9%), Palma de Mallorca (+4.7%) and Istanbul-Sabiha Gökçen (+4.6%) above all.

Surprise, however, for some smaller airports who showed record growth over 2019. Two Italians are highlighted among them:  Trapani (+223%) and Perugia (+143%) along with Tirana (+117%), Samarkand (+110%) and Lodz (+97%).