Brussels, 09/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - By November of last year, EU airports made up lost ground on non-EU European airports, the latest figures from the Airports Council International Europe (ACI-Europe) reveal.
From November 2013 to November 2014, air passenger traffic grew by 5.3% in EU airports, an almost identical rate to the 5.4% in non-EU airports, ACI-Europe reported on Thursday 8 January.
These figures confirm the trends observed towards the same rate of growth at both EU and non-EU airports, says Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI-Europe. He attributes this, inter alia, to a traffic slowdown at Russian airports as well as ongoing traffic losses in Ukraine and to a lesser extent in Israel. He notes, further, that traffic at some EU airports - in Greece, Luxembourg, Belgium, Ireland, Romania, Portugal and Croatia - continues to outperform the economic growth of their countries. ACI-Europe notes that Istanbul-Atatürk airport is again the third busiest European airport behind London-Heathrow and Paris-Charles de Gaulle. (MD)