In Paris (+3%) as in the provincial airports (+3.3%), the growth of French airports last year resulted in a record year: 181 million passengers were welcomed in 2015 according to the annual results of the Union des Aéroports Français. However, the trade association is calling for this performance to be put into perspective in the light of the figures recorded at European level, where traffic increased more significantly (+5.2%), and even more so at global level (+6.5%). Admittedly, the air traffic controllers' strike and above all the Paris attacks penalised the French results - to the tune of 1% in November, then 1.4% in December - but other factors can explain this slight delay according to the UAF. UAF points to the lack of connectivity at provincial airports, which are weaker than their European counterparts and have been declining since 2008.
Low-cost services still going strong in the regions
No major change in the traditional ranking of French airports, still dominated by Paris-CDG (+3.1% to 65,766,986 passengers) and Orly (+2.8%). The Paris airports, which now account for 56.20% of metropolitan traffic, compared with 57.6% in 2011, are ahead of Nice (+3.1%), Lyon (+2.8%) and Marseille (+1%). The strongest growth was recorded at the airports of Nantes (+5.7%), Bordeaux (+7.6%) and above all Beauvais (7.6%) and Basel Mulhouse (8.2%), two airports that are particularly focused on low-cost airlines. In fact, more than 62 % of passengers registered at EuroAirport are low-cost airlines, which now account for 41.1% of traffic at provincial airports. Conversely, domestic traffic continues to decline, and now accounts for just 28.09%, compared with 30.43% in 2011. As Jean-Michel Vernhes and Philippe Aliotti, Chairman and Managing Director of the Union des Aéroports Français, put it: "Domestic traffic has become European traffic.
