European aviation body Eurocontrol is forecasting air traffic across the continent to reach 9.5 million flights this year, which would be 85 per cent of 2019 levels.
This is a slight downgrade on Eurocontrol’s previous forecast of 2022 flights reaching 89 per cent of pre-Covid numbers. This drop was due to the impact of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 on air travel during the early months of this year.
Eurocontrol does not expect European flights to return to 2019 levels until 2024, with the number of flights set to reach 10.6 million in 2023, which would still be 5 per cent lower than in 2019.
Although full recovery for the aviation sector could be further delayed until 2027 due to possible “downside risks”, such as the spread of new Covid variants and the economic impact of high inflation on passenger demand.
Eurocontrol highlights “wide variation” in recovery rates across Europe with some countries in the south of the continent already expected to reach 2019 flight levels before the end of 2022.
“The invasion of Ukraine is having a limited impact at European level but the re-routings to avoid closed airspaces are affecting the number of overflights in various countries,” added Eurocontrol.