Air traffic sank 94%. There were only 4,018 flights in April
After a 36% drop in air traffic in March, the impact of the coronavirus was even greater in April. In the fourth month of the year, only 4,018 flights were managed by NAV Portugal.
The Portuguese air traffic control agency NAV said on Friday that it managed 4,018 flights in April, a fall of 94% over the same month last year and “confirms the strong impact” of the Covid-19 pandemic on air traffic.
In April 2019, over 69,000 flights had been recorded.
The NAV also reports that in March the decline was 36%, “much thanks to a first half of the month which was still under normal conditions until air traffic bans began”.
In the first four months of the year, the NAV managed a total of 165,600 flights, compared to 253,700 in the same period of 2019 and 246,000 in 2018.
“These figures are even lower than the most pessimistic forecasts drawn up by the NAV Portugal when drawing up the budget for 2020, when it was estimated that in the worst-case scenario, a minimum of 183,000 flights would be handled in April”.
The NAV admits that it is not yet possible to predict a return to normality in air traffic, despite the announcement of the resumption of some routes from this month onwards and considers the trend of “significant fall in the coming months” to be “expected”.
The total number of flights managed by NAV includes not only flights from/to Portuguese airports, but also those over Portuguese airspace, which totals more than 5.8 million km2.
