Athens International Airport: traffic in 2022 almost doubled versus 2021 but fell short of the 2019 record

It was with a good performance that 2022 came to an end for Athens International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos. The passenger traffic of Athens International Airport reached 22.72 million passengers which is an increase of 84.1% compared to 2021. The difference with the airport’s record year, i.e. 2019, finally closed at -11.1%, with a difference of about 1.8 million passengers.

Here, of course, we should mention that in the second half of 2022, AIA recorded 13.8 million passengers, while in 2019 we had 14.3 million passengers. This means that in the second half the difference was limited to approximately 466,000 passengers (or a difference of 72,000 passengers per month).

If we add to this equation the absence of the big markets from China, Russia and Ukraine, then we can draw the conclusion that in 2022, after the full opening of air transport since the summer, it moved almost marginally compared to 2019.

In 2022, Athens airport registered over 2 million passengers for six consecutive months and close to 3 million passengers for two months (2.8). What is also interesting that we can record is that December moved with very small differences compared to 2019.

Athens Airport passenger traffic during December totaled 1.6 million, down 3% compared to December 2019 levels. In detail, domestic passenger traffic exceeded December 2019 levels by 7.9% , having a positive sign consistently since September. International passenger traffic showed a decrease of 7.3%, having a constant difference with 2019.

Flights

In total, during 2022, the number of flights at Athens International Airport reached approximately 213 thousand, showing an increase of 34.2% compared to 2021 and a decrease of 5.4% compared to 2019.

Both domestic and international flights exceeded 2021 levels by 30.9% and 37.1% respectively. Domestic flights also exceeded 2019 levels by 2.9%, while international flights remained down compared to 2019 at 11.4%.