ACI EUROPE recently released air traffic statistics for 2015. Overall, the statistics showed European passenger traffic grew by 5.2 percent. European Union airports showed the most growth, at around 5.6 percent on average, with airports in Ireland, Portugal, Romania, Greece, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Lithuania showing double-digit growth. However, non-European Union airports actually saw a diminishment in growth, topping out at around 3.9 percent. The report attributed this diminishment to a slowing of air traffic to Russia and Ukraine. An even smaller growth was seen in freight traffic, as little as 0.7 percent.

Despite this, the general outlook is hopeful. “EU airports generally performed extremely well, despite Germany and France being impacted by the airline and ATC strikes and the Paris terror attacks,” said Olivier Jankovec, director general, ACI EUROPE. “Remarkably, Istanbul Ataturk Airport became the third busiest European airport with 61.8 million passengers, after London Heathrow (74.9 million) and Paris Charles de Gaulle (65.7 million). It should be noted, however, that small regional airports across the continent underperformed the European average, with their passenger volume only increasing by 3.8 percent. This is indicative of traffic growth becoming more concentrated and less inclusive.”