Last year, Paris continued to record growth in its traffic, albeit modest, with +0.8 %, or 87.1 million passengers, but well ahead of rival hubs such as Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt, all of which suffered declines.
Roissy continues to be driven by the hub of Air France-KLM and its Skyteam partners. The airport posted an increase of 1.6 %, approaching 61 million passengers. Passenger traffic was affected by the poor performance of domestic routes, down 3.8 %, as well as by flights to the French overseas departments and territories and Asia. In 2009, traffic is expected to fall from 2.5 % to 4.5 % before beginning a timid recovery in 2010. According to Aéroports de Paris management, the relative resilience of traffic is due to the strength of the network on offer. Air France and its partners offer 23,800 possible weekly connections with a transfer time of two hours; a figure well above that of Lufthansa in Frankfurt or British Airways at London-Heathrow.
The management of Aéroports de Paris is therefore not calling its investment programme into question. In 2008, ADP inaugurated the new pier at terminal 2E and terminal 2G for regional traffic at Roissy, offering additional capacity of almost 10 million passengers. The completion of work at Roissy 1 in March increased capacity by a further 2.7 million passengers.
The company has also renovated the international zone at Orly-Sud. Between now and 2013, it will invest nearly €2.5 billion in the construction of satellite 4 at terminal 2, the renovation of terminals 2B and 2D and the creation of a direct link between terminals 2A and 2C to improve passenger flow.
