Airport numbers up more than 28% to 31.3M in H1
The UK was the main country of origin and destination of flights, with a growth of 23.7% in the number of passengers who disembarked, France ranked second, followed by Spain.
The number of passengers at Portugal’s airports increased by 28.4% in the first half of the year, year-on-year, to 31.3 million, according to data from Statistics Portugal (INE), released on Monday.
“In the first half of 2023, the number of passengers increased by 28.4% compared to the same period in 2022, while the movement of cargo and mail registered a slight decrease (-0.8%),” said INE, which published the rapid statistics on air transport.
Of the total of 31,256,000 passengers handled in the first half, Lisbon airport handled 50.8% (15.9 million), having grown 30.9% when compared to the same period of 2022 (+8.7% compared to the first half of 2019), while Porto airport concentrated 22.6% of the total passengers and increased 28.1% (+14.9% compared to the first half of 2019) and Faro airport registered a growth of 20.6% (+5.2% compared to the same period of 2019).
Considering the volume of passengers who disembarked and embarked on international flights in the first half of 2023, the United Kingdom was the main country of origin and destination of flights, with a growth of 23.7% in the number of passengers who disembarked and 24.9% in the number of passengers embarked, compared to the same period of 2022.
France ranked second, with increases of 23.3% and 23.7%, in the same order, followed by Spain, with very significant increases compared to the first half of 2022 (+47.5%, both as a country of origin and as a country of destination of flights).
In an analysis of June, national airports handled 6.4 million passengers and 17,900 tonnes of cargo and mail, corresponding to variations of +11.4% and -1.9%, respectively, compared to June 2022.
Since the beginning of 2023, there have been historical highs in the monthly values of passengers at national airports, with the month of June recording the average daily disembarkation of 107,000 passengers at national airports, a value higher than that recorded in June 2022 (95,900; +11.6%) and 9.1% above that recorded in June 2019 (98,100).
