Europe’s air travel market showed “resilience” in 2025 to set a new annual traffic record of 2.6 billion passengers, despite geopolitical headwinds, according to airports association ACI Europe’s 2025 Airport Traffic Report.
The continent’s airports saw a 4.4 per cent increase in traffic last year, which equates to an extra 100 million passengers compared with 2024’s figures.
ACI Europe said air passenger demand showed “remarkable resilience” in 2025, despite “generally lacklustre European economies, inflated airfares, significant supply and capacity pressures, as well as ever volatile and tense geopolitics”.
But the association also pointed to a “multi-speed” air travel market across Europe: while many airports set new passenger records during 2025, some 41 per cent remained below pre-Covid 2019 traffic levels. ACI Europe attributed these differences to “traffic volatility, airline dominance and consolidation along with renewed competitive pressures upon airports”.
The report highlights the “underperformance” of some of Europe’s largest aviation markets, such as the UK, France and Germany, which all saw growth below the 4.4 per cent average in 2025.
Traffic in the UK only grew by 1.7 per cent year-on-year in 2025, while passenger numbers in France and Germany increased by 2.1 per cent and 3.2 per cent respectively, with ACI blaming “punitive taxation regimes” in these countries for this performance.
ACI added that airports in Italy, where traffic rose by 4.4 per cent year-on-year, and Spain (up by 3.9 per cent) had benefitted from a “more supportive environment as regards macro-economic conditions and/or aviation policies”.
The highest growth markets last year were found in the east or the south of the continent, with Slovakia, Poland, Malta, Hungary, Slovenia and Cyprus all recording double-digit year-on-year increases in passenger numbers.
Heathrow hangs on to top spot
London Heathrow narrowly held on to its position as Europe’s busiest airport with 84.5 million passengers in 2025, but Istanbul Airport was snapping at its heels with 84.44 million travellers.
Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport retained third position with 72 million passengers last year, followed by Amsterdam Schiphol (68.8 million) and Madrid’s Barajas Airport in fifth place with 68.1 million travellers.
Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, hailed air travel as “a powerful and largely resilient economic driver”, which acted as a “critical enabler of competitiveness” across Europe.
“Yet too many governments and policy makers still fail to connect the dots, and do not treat aviation as the strategic asset it is – especially in the EU,” added Jankovec.
ACI Europe is expecting more growth in European air traffic in 2026, with a year-on-year increase of 3.3 per cent in passenger numbers expected.
“Many airports are also likely to benefit from Europeans being more prone to travel within Europe rather than externally, while our continent will remain a destination of choice for non–Europeans,” said Jankovec.
“Meanwhile, Europe’s airlines are projected to deliver the strongest financial performance globally, and the supply chain pressures constraining their capacity deployment are expected to somewhat ease.”
Jankovec again expressed concern about the impact on airports of the full roll-out of the EU’s new biometric Entry-Exit System (EES) from April. Although, the EU has emphasised the added flexibility it will give member states on EES implementation during summer 2026.