European Airport Traffic Seen Down Over 8 Percent

February 6, 2009

The number of passengers using European airports in December fell 7.7 percent year-on-year and is seen down more than 8 percent in January, the head of airports body ACI Europe said on Friday.

Olivier Jankovec said that freight traffic, an indicator of trade, had fallen 21.4 percent in December year-on-year, with further bad news to come.

"On a gut feeling, we'll see a decline of 5 percent in 2009 for the whole European airport industry, but there's a lot of uncertainty about the depth and length of the crisis," he added.