European airports are seeing increases in traffic due to the introduction of the EU-wide Digital COVID Certificate
Frankfurt Airport, which is owned by airport operator Fraport, has revealed that it saw 3.37m passengers in August, with demand driven mainly by summer holiday traffic to European tourist destinations, while intercontinental traffic remained low due to ongoing travel restrictions.
These figures were roughly half (51.3%) of the pre-pandemic level for the same month and the summer travel period of June to August accounted for 8m of the 12.7m passengers that the airport has served so far this year.
The facility’s cargo division continued its growth trend with a 13.3% year-on-year increase to 182,362 metric tonnes, while this was a 5.3% increase in cargo figures for the same month in 2019.
Other airports across Fraport’s portfolio also saw increases in traffic including Slovenia’s Ljubljana welcoming 73.56 passengers, Brazilian airports Fortaleza and Porto Alegre combining to see traffic of 801,187 customers and Peru’s capital, Lima Airport handling more than 1.1m passengers across August and these figures represented a 100% increase in traffic figures year-on-year for each facility.
The group notes that “most of [our] airports worldwide still registered lower passenger figures. However, some Group airports serving high-demand tourist destinations (such as the Greek airports or Antalya Airport on the Turkish Riviera) saw traffic rebound in August 2021 to approximately 80 percent of pre-crisis levels recorded during the same month in 2019.”
