Airport passenger numbers in September almost twice level of a year ago
Last year passenger movements in the first nine months had been a 67.3% down on the year, while in 2019 there had been a 6.9% year-on-year increase.
Portugal’s airports in September recorded 3.6 million passenger movements, up 95.8% from the same month last year, while the amount of cargo and mail handled totalled 16,800 tonnes in September, up 35%, the National Statistics Institute (INE) revealed on Friday.
However, as compared with September 2019, passenger movements were down 39.3% and cargo and mail movement by 5.2%.
In the first nine months of this year as a whole, there was a 3.6% increase in passenger movements at the country’s airports from the same period last year but these were 66.1% down on two years earlier.
Last year passenger movements in the first nine months had been a 67.3% down on the year, while in 2019 there had been a 6.9% year-on-year increase.
In the first nine months of this year, France was the country of origin and destination of flights that accounted for most passenger movements, followed at some distance by the UK and Germany.
In terms of passengers arriving at Portugal’s airports in September alone, 76.9% came from abroad (against 76.0% in the same month of the previous year), most of them coming from airports in the European continent (67.6%). Of departing passengers, 77.4% were headed to foreign destinations (against 78.7% a year earlier), mostly airports located in continental Europe.
In September, 15,800 commercial flights arrived at Portugal’s airports, carrying 3.6 million passengers (boarding, disembarking or in transit), while 16,800 tons of cargo and mail were handled. These figures represent year-on-year increases of 46.4%, 95.8% and 35.0%, respectively.
Compared with September 2019, there was a 27.0% drop in the number of aircraft landed, a 39.3% decrease in passengers and a 5.2% drop in cargo and mail movements.
In the first nine months of this year, Lisbon airport handled 44.9% of all passengers at 7.1 million, down 8.8% on the year. Faro airport, by contrast, saw an increase of 14.5% in passenger movements, to 2.1 million, although that is still 71.8% down from the same period in 2019, when it had 7.4 million passengers.
