In the course of the Corona crisis, air traffic is experiencing a descent that is unparalleled - in the summer months of July and August alone, 80 percent fewer passengers were on the move.
According to Statistics Austria, in July and August 2020 at the six Austrian airports with a total of 1,5 million passengers (including transit), only a fifth of the passenger volume of the corresponding period of the previous year was achieved. The flight movements in scheduled and occasional traffic at the airports in Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Linz and Salzburg decreased by 66,1 percent to 20.043 take-offs and landings.
"The global travel restrictions due to the corona pandemic have caused a hard landing for passenger air traffic. After a record winter, 2020 was followed by the weakest summer in more than 30 years. In the main holiday months of July and August, there were almost 80 percent fewer passengers than in the summer of the previous year. With the onset of the corona crisis, the number of flights initially fell to half of the flights in March 2019, while the number of passengers even fell by almost two thirds. In April and May 2020, Austrian air traffic finally collapsed completely: not even 5 percent of the flights of the previous year took place," explains Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas.
The weakest summer in more than 30 years
The misery took its course in March 2020: The number of flight movements in Austrian air traffic was 13.242, 50,6 percent lower than in March 2019, the number of passengers (1 million passengers) even fell by 65,3 percent. April and May 2020 were most severely affected by the Corona crisis, with a decrease of almost 100 percent in the number of passengers (12.800 and 21.203 passengers). Compared to the same period in the previous year, less than 5 percent of the flights were recorded (April: 1.103, May: 1.195 flight movements).
In the following three summer months, too, strong declines were reported compared to the previous year, although the percentage declines tended to decrease over the course of the summer. In June 2020, 2.657 passengers were carried on 141.369 flights, a decrease of 90,8 percent or 95.8 percent compared to June 2019. This was followed by 617.240 passengers on 8.538 flights in July (-82,7 percent and -71,4 percent compared to July 2019) and 858.201 passengers on 11.505 flights in August 2020 (-75,8 percent and -60,6 percent compared to August 2019). Together, 2020 million passengers were transported to Austria's airports in July and August 1,5. Similar low values were last recorded in July and August 1989.
The most popular travel destinations in Corona summer: Hamburg (26.020 passengers), Zurich (25.266 passengers), Athens (24.831 passengers), Berlin (24.343 passengers) and Cologne (22.091 passengers). Compared with this, the most frequent final destinations of passengers handled in Austria in the summer of 2019 were London (152.558 passengers), Berlin (110.424 passengers), Palma de Mallorca (93.623 passengers), Hamburg (83.833 passengers) and Amsterdam (81.670 passengers).