The organisation responsible for coordinating flights in Europe, Eurocontrol has just published its latest activity report of the continent. And there's good news for the airlines. By August, flights had returned to 71% of 2019 levels across Europe. However, this average conceals a wide variation between countries and also between the different traffic flows for each country.
Eurocontrol had already noted that domestic flights held up better during the pandemic than international flights. A trend that continued and strengthened over the summer. Already in July, Turkey had surpassed its 2019 level for the number of domestic flights. Italy in turn beat this figure in August, reaching 107% of 2019 movements. France, Greece, Norway and Spain recorded between 90% and 95% of movements in August 2019.. The exception is German flights, which stand out by being overtaken by other traffic flows.
Eurocontrol analyses the relative weakness of international traffic to passenger travel restrictions compared to health measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Relatively weak international traffic
These rules continue to affect mainly international passenger flights. According to Eurocontrol analyses, the UK and Norway are more affected than others with a number of movements still below 50% of 2019 traffic. The main holiday destinations, on the other hand, experienced a rapid recovery in July and even more so in August.
In detail, Eurocontrol counted in August across Europe 759,786 aircraft movements618,021 of which were on domestic routes (representing 74% of 2019 figures). International flights, with 127,997 movements, reached 55% of the 2019 volume.
France did better than average. Its volume of aircraft movements reached 71% (or 238,801 including overflights). The volume of domestic flights represented 94% of what it was two years ago, or 29,127 movements. Internationally, this volume reached 70% of the 2019 level, or 82,513 movements.
For comparison, the volume of movements in Germany reached in August 65% of the 2019 level, including 56% for domestic. In Spainthe volume was 68% for total flights and overflights, as well as for international flights. On the other hand, domestic traffic rose sharply, with a volume of 96%. Lastly, in the United Kingdomtotal volume of flights remained disappointing in August: 51% of the total volume, 46% for international movements and 68% for domestic movements.
