European aviation traffic has now recovered to more than 80 per cent of 2019 levels, according to the latest data from air traffic management organisation Eurocontrol.
The aviation body said that network traffic in the past week had reached 82.5 per cent of 2019’s figures, with growth being particularly driven by low-cost carriers Ryanair and Wizz Air.
Ryanair is the continent’s top aircraft operator with an average of 2,779 flights per day in the week up to 18 April, which represents a 10 per cent rise on same week three years ago.
Hungary-based Wizz is growing even faster with 728 flights in the past week, a rise of 17 per cent on its 2019 services. Fellow low-cost carrier easyJet is not recovering so quickly and remains 15 per cent behind 2019 flights.
The rest of the top 10 European carriers are still below their 2019 flight numbers, with major airlines Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, KLM and SAS all operating at least 20 per cent fewer services than in April 2019, according to the Eurocontrol data.
The UK continues to be the busiest European aviation market with an average of 4,771 flights per day, around 82 per cent of 2019’s daily services.
Spain is in second place for the highest number of flights, followed by Germany, France and Italy. Germany continues to see the largest fall in services (down by 21 per cent) compared with 2019.
None of the top 10 European markets have yet to return to 2019 flight levels with Portugal (down by 5 per cent) and Norway (down 3 per cent) seeing the best recoveries so far.
Eurocontrol is predicting “steady growth” in flights up to the peak summer season when it is forecast to reach 89 per cent of 2019 traffic by August before rising to 92 per cent by the end of 2022.
This would represent a total of 9.3 million flights throughout Europe in 2022, compared with 11.1 million flights in 2019, which was a record for the continent. There were only 6.2 million flights in Europe in 2021.
Eamonn Brennan, director general of Eurocontrol, said aviation has continued to “recover well” despite the war in Ukraine and a rise in fuel costs.
“Airlines are adding lots of capacity, and some airlines are already outperforming their pre-pandemic levels. People are showing that they are really keen to fly – many for the first time since before the pandemic began.”
“Clearly, however, there are still some downside risks related to continued geopolitical tensions that could further impact fuel prices and economic conditions, as well as the possibility of new Covid variants.
“We’re also seeing staff shortages in parts of the industry, particularly at airports in key roles such as airport screeners or ground handlers, and this needs to be carefully managed.”