The corona pandemic has had a strong impact on the number of passengers at Linz Airport: The airport recorded an 88,2 percent decrease to 51.318 passengers. Airfreight as a mainstay turned out to be extremely helpful for the Upper Austrian airport, as this segment achieved 37,2 percent growth.

Linz announced that the second quarter of 2020 initially saw a decline in the cargo area. Around the middle of the year, the U-turn was achieved and since September 2020 the monthly tonnages have already been above those of the previous year.

In recent years, Linz Airport has made intensive efforts to establish new cargo flight connections in addition to the existing DHL cargo flights to Leipzig and Brussels. In mid-April 2020, Turkish Cargo started the regular Linz-Istanbul freight flight, which had an extremely positive effect on the tonnages flown.

Linz Airport recorded an increase of 37,2 percent to 11.147 tonnes in the freight flown. The launch of the Linz-Istanbul cargo flight was decisive for the growth in air freight.

Frankfurt and Düsseldorf suspended since the beginning of the pandemic

“The Corona crisis has serious consequences for the entire European aviation industry - and thus also for the airports. Our priorities were, on the one hand, to protect our customers and employees, but also the employees of the partner companies at the airport, and, on the other hand, to maintain flight operations and adjust the costs of ongoing operations to the current situation. I would like to thank everyone involved, our employees, the works council, but also our external partners, who all contributed to us being able to master this challenge in the best possible way, ”said Norbert Draskovits, Managing Director of Flughafen Linz GesmbH.

In scheduled traffic, Linz suffered particularly from the fact that the routes to Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main have been suspended since the beginning of the corona pandemic. Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines have announced reactivation for the end of March 2021. Around 26 weekly vacation flights were on the program for charter flights. Due to the travel warnings and travel restrictions, the tour operators were ultimately only able to operate three weekly flights in the summer season.

Holiday flyers are planning a comeback

For the year 2021, Linz Airport will “drive on sight” with regard to passenger traffic: “The Covid19 vaccination is an essential step for the entire aviation and tourism industry. It increases the customers' sense of security and will lead to a surge in demand. We assume that the scheduled flights to Düsseldorf and Frankfurt will be resumed for the summer flight schedule 2021 - albeit with reduced frequencies. The tour operators have currently planned 18 weekly vacation flights for the coming summer season. Bulgarian Air Charter will station an aircraft in Linz. Corendon Airlines will also have Linz in its program again with several weekly flights. However, we will continue to drive “on sight”, as the past year has shown us that new developments can always occur. We assume that the number of passengers will increase moderately in 2021. We will certainly not be able to show the number of passengers “before” Covid19 for a few years ”, says Norbert Draskovits.

The Linz numbers at a glance:

• Scheduled traffic: 36.551 passengers (-85,7%)
• Alternative traffic: 1.943 passengers (-67,2%)
• Charter traffic: 12.824 passengers (-92,6%)
• Total passenger traffic: 51.318 passengers (-88,2%)
• Total cargo: 11.147 tons (+37,2 percent)