Passengers through country’s airports in H1 close to pre-pandemic

The number of passengers handled at Portugal’s airports grew 122.5% in July compared to the same month in 2021 and 269.1% in the year to date since January, continuing the trend of approaching pre-pandemic levels, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Thursday.

“The beginning of the year 2022 revealed a trend of approaching the levels recorded in the pre-pandemic period,” INE said, advancing that, “in July 2022, the average daily disembarkation of 104,300 passengers was recorded at national airports (95,900 in the previous month), approaching the figures observed in July 2019 (105,500).”

According to the data released this Thursday, 6.2 million passengers moved through national airports in July, corresponding to a year-on-year change of +122.5% (+186.0% in June). Compared to July 2019, passenger movements decreased by 1.5% (-2.7% in the previous month).

Of passengers disembarked in July, 81.1% corresponded to international traffic (74.8% in the same month of 2021), mostly from the European continent (68.6% of the total). Regarding embarking passengers, 79.5% corresponded to international traffic (69.8% in July 2021), having as main destination airports in the European continent (65.7% of the total).

Considering the period between January and July 2022, the number of passengers increased 269.1% compared to the same period in 2021 (-10.7% compared to the same period in 2019).

Until July, Lisbon airport handled 49.3% of total passengers (15.1 million) and recorded a growth of 300.0% compared to the same period in 2021 (-15.0% compared to the same period in 2019).

Considering the three airports with the highest annual passenger traffic, Faro recorded the largest increase compared to 2021 (+397.7%) and Porto recorded the greatest approximation to 2019 levels (-8.3%).

Between January and July 2022, the United Kingdom was the main country of origin and destination of flights, with increases of 589.2% in the number of passengers disembarked and 675.4% in the number of passengers embarked, compared to 2021, “justified by the closure of the air corridor between Portugal and the United Kingdom for much of the period under review in 2021”.

France occupied the second position, with increases of 192.3% in passengers disembarked and 221.9% in passengers embarked, compared to the same period in 2021, followed by Spain.

Analysing July 2022 alone, 22,800 aircraft landed at national airports on commercial flights and 19,800 tonnes of cargo and mail were handled (+46.4% and +20.0% respectively, compared to July 2021). In June 2022, year-on-year changes of +74.4% and +16.9% had been recorded, in the same order.

Compared to July 2019, there were variations of -2.1% in the number of aircraft landed, -1.5% in passengers handled and +7.6% in cargo and mail movements (-3.3%, -2.7% and +11.4% in the previous month, respectively).

Until July, the movement of goods at Lisbon airport represented 73.6% of the total, reaching 94,800 tonnes (+38.4% compared to the same period of 2021), and compared to the first seven months of 2019, there was an increase of 11.3%.

In the remaining airports as a whole, cargo and mail movements increased by 5.3% (+6.4% compared to the same period of 2019).