While Paris Orly and Paris Roissy CDG airports (83.37 million passengers) recorded growth of +0.3 %, Beauvais, Bordeaux and Nantes each saw increases of more than 10 %. Basel-Mulhouse, Lyon and Marseille also recorded increases in passenger numbers of 7.1 %, 3.4 % and 3.2 % respectively. In the end, among the major French airports, only Nice, Montpellier and Strasbourg saw their traffic fall by between 2 % and 4 %.
The driving force behind this growth continues to be low-cost air transport. Ryanair and Easyjet opened 50 and 38 routes respectively last year. But this growth is mainly benefiting regional airports. Paris saw the opening of 56 new routes, including 21 from the low-cost airport of Beauvais, to the north of the capital. This is less than a third of the 171 routes launched in 2010 by 42 airlines from 36 airports in France, according to a study by the anna.aero website presented at the French Connect conference.
