Air travel is booming this summer, but will passenger demand last after the European holidays?
The question was the focus of this week’s Airports Council International (ACI) Europe Annual Congress in Rome, on the cusp of the approaching high season.
DST is shaping up to be by far the best since the start of the coronavirus crisis, which has hit the airline industry hard since 2020.
Some airlines such as Ryanair and countries, notably Greece, have already regained or even exceeded their daily flight numbers for 2019, according to Eurocontrol, a pan-European air traffic control agency.
Across the continent, air traffic over the past week was 86 percent of the same period in 2019, Eurocontrol said, and is expected to hit as much as 95 percent in August, according to its most optimistic estimate.
And despite sharply increased ticket prices, long lines at various airports from Frankfurt to Dublin to Amsterdam and strikes by flight attendants, pilots and air traffic controllers, companies are filling the seats for the coming weeks.
“Visibility is low because there is a lot of uncertainty,” said Olivier Jankovec, Director General of ACI Europe.
“We’re in a war economy in Europe now, we’re looking at a pretty severe recession, we’ve got inflation at record levels, so how all of this is going to affect consumer sentiment…the jury is out.”
The Director-General for Transport and Mobility at the European Commission, Henrik Hololei, echoed this idea.
“We really need to tighten the seat belts because there’s going to be a lot of turbulence,” he told delegates.
“We are entering … a period of uncertainty that we have not experienced in the last decade. And that, of course, is the greatest enemy of business,” he said.
– Too many unknowns –
Hololei listed the war in Ukraine, high energy prices, and shortages of energy, food, and labor.
“We also have interest rates rising for the first time in a decade,” he said.
The price of jet fuel has doubled over the past year, with a lack of refining capacity fueling the explosion in crude prices.
Fuel accounts for about a quarter of airlines’ operating costs, which they have passed on to consumers in the form of ticket prices to replenish coffers drained by the two-year health crisis.
Still, strong demand has returned, confirmed Eleni Kaloyirou, managing director of Hermes Airports, which manages Larnaca and Paphos airports in Cyprus, where the peak tourist season extends into November.
“People want to take their vacation,” she said, but admitted “we’re worried about next year.”
Athens International Airport General Manager Yiannis Paraschis also expressed concerns that “rising energy costs and inflation will eat away at a large part of the disposable income of European households”.
Istanbul International Airport Manager Kadri Samsunlu expressed concern about the impact of inflation in Western Europe.
And if consumer confidence is damaged, “we don’t know what will happen to demand,” he warned.
The last unknown looming over European air traffic in the medium term is a possible new outbreak of the corona virus.
“Covid hasn’t gone away, nor is it seasonal flu,” Hololei warned.
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