French airports in general have emerged from the health crisis in 2022, but the recovery is uneven depending on the cities served, the connections and the type of travelers, its main organization, the UAF, detailed on Tuesday. Nearly 174 million passengers passed through these facilities last year, the Union of French Airports said in a statement. This volume has almost doubled in a year, but it is still 18.8% lower than in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic that had divided traffic by three.
And the year 2023 will not yet be the year of a return to the figures prior to the crisis, according to the UAF, which sees it end with a passenger deficit of 10% compared to before Covid. However, several airports have already done better in 2022, in particular Beauvais which, with 15.8% more than three years earlier, benefited from the extensive low-cost Ryanair program that operates its main base there. Also note the good performance of the Corsican platforms: Figari (+21.2% compared to 2019), Ajaccio (+2.7%) and Bastia (-4.5%). Paris-Orly (-8.4%), Montpellier (-9%) and Marseille (-9.9%) also performed better than average.
Roissy victim of the late resumption of traffic to Asia
But many airports are still struggling: Clermont-Ferrand has a deficit of 56.3% compared to the pre-crisis, Brest 35.1% and Strasbourg 28.6%. In Lyon-Saint-Exupéry it is 27.1%, in Toulouse 26.9% and Bordeaux 25.9%. This last poor performance is explained by the ban on the connection with Paris-Orly, imposed before the Climate Law that blacklisted national airlines when there is a rail alternative in less than 2h30.
At Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, it was the late resumption of international traffic, in particular to Asia, that underpinned the passenger deficit of 24.5% in 2022 compared to 2019, the UAF explained. Roissy and Orly alone captured 53.3% of passengers in France last year.
The “low-cost” are on the rise
The president of the UAF, Thomas June, pointed out that “what is recovering very well are the airports where low-cost companies have strongly positioned themselves”, in contrast to other platforms that received “traditional” traffic, outside the radials from the Paris region.
In addition, “commercial traffic takes longer to resume (…) because companies have expedited travel,” he added at a press conference. On the other hand, the “low-cost” are on the rise and represented 43% of passenger traffic in France in 2022, an eight-point jump compared to 2022.
Source: BFM TV
