Near-term passenger traffic outlook improves but full recovery still in 2025: ACI Europe

An improved near-term passenger traffic picture will not translate into a speedier return to 2019 levels of air travel demand, according to fresh forecast data from airports body ACI Europe. The new forecast – released on the eve of the association’s annual congress – suggests the region will still only reach pre-pandemic airport passenger volumes in 2025, amid an “uneven and volatile” recovery. ACI Europe’s new base-case scenario is that passenger traffic at Europe’s airports will rise from 60% down on 2019 this year to -32% in 2022. The association’s previous base-case scenario, released in April 2021, had a weaker near-term outlook, with demand forecast at -64% and -36% in 2021 and 2022 respectively. The better outlook for passenger traffic in the remainder of 2021 and into 2022 is “thanks to the re-opening of the transatlantic market to European travellers as well as a progressive easing of travel restrictions on other long-haul markets – in particular in Asia”, ACI Europe says. But the new and previous forecasts converge at -15% in 2023 and -5% in 2024, suggesting the near-term traffic improvement will lose momentum. For 2025, the new base-case scenario has traffic 1% ahead, whereas the previous forecast was parity with 2019. ACI Europe’s new “optimistic” scenario, meanwhile, still sees the region achieving 2019 levels of traffic in 2024, while its new “pessimistic” scenario foresees parity with 2019 in 2026. Its previous outlook featured a much more severe “pessimistic” scenario and a less-steep recovery in the “optimistic” scenario.<br/>