Frankfurt airport’s traffic figures continued to see “a slight rebound” in August, although passenger numbers were still down 78.2 per cent compared to August 2019.
The figure is a small improvement on July when numbers were down 80.9 per cent, and the first time that the traffic decrease had dipped below 80 per cent since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe in March.
The airport said that increased demand was being spurred by holiday travel, but warned that “quarantine regulations introduced by the German government for all travellers returning from high-risk areas” had curbed this trend, with traffic down 80.7 per cent in the first week in September.
Accumulated passenger traffic for January to August 2020 was down 68.4 per cent on the same period in 2019.
Last week Heathrow warned that Frankfurt airport had “overtaken” the London hub – Heathrow’s traffic was down 81.5 per cent in August.
Heathrow’s North American passenger numbers down 95 per cent in August
Frankfurt airport’s owner Fraport Group also released figures for August traffic at its other facilities, with Ljubljana airport down 86.7 per cent, the Brazilian airports of Fortaleza and Porto Alegre down a combined 77.1 per cent, and Lima airport down 95.4 per cent, “as a result of widespread travel restrictions”.
The group also operates a number of Greek regional airports, which saw a combined 55.5 per cent decrease in traffic during August.
However demand at China’s Xi’an airport continued to improve, with August passenger numbers down just 18.7 per cent year-on-year.
