French airports struggling to return to pre-Covid levels

French airport traffic figures for 2023 have been falling one after the other since the beginning of February. Often through triumphant press releases, based on a an upturn in traffic that continued last year. This is confirmed by theUnion of French Airports (UAF) in its annual report.

Last year, traffic at French airports totalled 198.68 million commercial passengers, down by just 7.3% compared with 2019. The increase in traffic compared with 2022 amounts to +14,2%. This represents almost 25 million additional passengers. If only traffic in mainland France is taken into account, passenger numbers reached 186.04 million, down 7.6% on 2019the last year before Covid. As a result, figures above the pre-Covid period for all airport traffic are not expected until 2025...

A recovery, but weaker than elsewhere in Europe

According to UAF, the level of traffic is equivalent to that of the previous year. 2017. And the recovery remains less strong in France than in the other countries of the European Union (-5.8% compared with 2019). There are many reasons for this recovery, which is probably slower than initially expected, starting with a long-haul demand has not returned to all markets last year, particularly in Asia. This explains the performance of Roissy-CDG airport, where traffic in 2023 was 11.5% lower than in 2019.

Another factor is the cancellation of domestic flights from Orly the government and a general reduction in frequencies on domestic routes. In addition an anaemic recovery in business travel by plane and the rejection of air transport by some travellers on environmental groundsA rejection that has grown over the last year. The UAF therefore forecasts that domestic traffic will fall by 1.7% in 2023.. This is still almost 21% below its pre-Covid levels.

In his analysis, UAF notes that the lack of dynamism in domestic traffic is weighing on the results of certain airports. This is the case, for example, of Lille-Lesquin (-14.8% compared with 2019), Toulouse-Blagnac (-18.9% compared with 2019), or a region like Brittany (-38.9% fewer passengers compared with 2019).

In 2023, total traffic growth will therefore be driven by the recovery of the international traffic. The latter now accounts for 77% of traffic in mainland France in 2023 (compared with 74% in 2022 and 2019). Or almost 144 million passengers 148.1 million in 2019. International business is now just 2.8% down on pre-Covid results.

Low-cost traffic on the increase

This performance was underpinned by the ever-increasing success of the low-cost traffic. It achieved a passenger market share of 43.2%35.1% in 2019. Last year, low-cost airlines attracted almost 10 million more passengers than in 2019. A total of 80.4 million passengers.

Visit Paris (Roissy and Orly), its share of total traffic is 28% (61.3% at Orly and 12% at CDG). But this share rises to 61.4% at major regional airports -those with more than 5 million passengers. 17 airports have low-cost traffic in excess of 70% with records at Beauvais (99.7%), Perpignan (92.3%), Tarbes (85.3%), Nantes (79.7%), Strasbourg and Lille (both with 78.5%). At the other major airports, low-cost airlines have a market share of around 50% at Lyon, Nice and Toulouse, 55% at Marseille and around 65% at Montpellier and Basel-Mulhouse.

And finally.., the strong recovery in international traffic worked in Aéroports de Paris' favour in 2023. The two Paris hubs regained their 2019 market share, generating 53.6% of total passenger traffic. This share fell slightly to 53.3% in 2022. Major regional airports for their part represented 37.4% of all passenger traffic last year.

(Source: UAF)