Passenger traffic growth ‘slows’ at Frankfurt airport in July

Germany’s main hub airport Frankfurt has seen passenger growth slow this summer after only recording a small increase in passenger traffic during July.

Fraport, which operates 30 airports including Frankfurt, said that the German hub had catered for 6 million passengers last month but this was only 0.5 per cent higher than in July 2023. The number of flights at Frankfurt during July fell by 0.3 per cent year-on-year to 40,515 aircraft movements.

The airport had been enjoying larger monthly year-on-year traffic increases earlier this year, as it recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic at a much slower rate than other major European hubs.

Frankfurt’s overall traffic in July was still nearly 13 per cent lower than during the same month in 2019 – this is stark contrast to other major European hubs such as London Heathrow, which continues to set a series of new passenger records this year.

More positively, Fraport said that Frankfurt had seen “ongoing strong demand” for key long-haul markets, such as the US and China, with the latter seeing a 35.5 per cent year-on-year increase in passengers in July.

Airlines flying from Frankfurt also enjoyed a record high monthly load factor of 86.1 per cent, which was just ahead of the previous high mark of 85.9 per cent in August 2015.

Many of Fraport’s other airports enjoyed more impressive growth in July, such as Ljubljana in Slovenia, which saw a year-on-year increase of 8.1 per cent. The company’s 14 regional airports in Greece also recorded overall passenger growth of 3.8 per cent, while Antalya in nearby Turkey reported a 2.1 per cent traffic increase in July.

Across all its airports, Fraport catered for 21.8 million passengers in July, which was “roughly on par” with July 2023.