Business travel has seen a “noticeable rebound” at Frankfurt airport since the start of the winter flight schedule.
Fraport Group, which owns Germany’s major hub airport, said that the rise in corporate traffic had boosted Frankfurt’s intercontinental routes, particularly to and from North America. While western European routes have also benefited from a stronger business market.
In November, Frankfurt catered for 4.1 million passengers, which was a 41 per cent rise on the same month in 2021, although traffic was still down by 19 per cent on November 2019.
Despite the upswing in business travel, the leisure market continues to be the “main growth driver” for Frankfurt, with destinations such as Cyprus and Turkey performing well.
Another major European hub, Paris Charles de Gaulle welcomed 4.7 million passengers in November but this was still only 83.6 per cent of November 2019’s traffic. By contrast, sister airport Paris Orly exceeded its pre-Covid figures last month with 2.3 million passengers, up by 1.1 per cent on 2019.
Both airports are part of the Paris Aeroport group which has catered for a total of 79.1 million passengers during the first 11 months of the year, an increase of 42.4 million from 2021 but still around 21 per cent lower than in 2019.
It is a similar story at Amsterdam Schiphol which served just under 4 million passengers in November, compared with 5.3 million travellers during the same month three years ago. The Dutch airport still has a cap on passenger numbers in place over the winter schedule.