Airports face difficult future

The international body which monitors the performance of airports worldwide says they face a challenging future as economic uncertainty continues.

Airports Council International (ACI) reports that worldwide passenger growth at airports in June was just 2%. And international traffic, which in previous months had grown strongly, slowed to just 3.2% compared to June 2007.

“The second half of the year is set to be a challenge for airports across the globe. No one is immune to this slowing trend, which we hope may still be of a temporary nature. At the moment it all comes down to the impact of the price of oil on economies, cost of living and transport direct costs. It is that simple,” comments ACI director of economics, Andreas Schimm.

Domestic passenger traffic at airports in June increased by only 1% worldwide, and actually declined in Europe and Africa. “Sluggish domestic markets in Spain and the UK have dragged down numbers in Europe,” ACI reports.

Recently released data from ACI for 2007 shows that Heathrow is the third busiest airport in the world with 68 million passengers. Atlanta is the world’s busiest airport with 89 million passengers, followed by Chicago O’Hare airport with 67 million.

However, in terms of international traffic, Heathrow is the busiest airport in the world, with 62 million passengers, followed by Paris Charles de Gaulle with 55 million, Amsterdam with 48 million, Frankfurt 47 million and Hong Kong 46 million.

Nine of the top 10 fastest growing airports in 2007 were in the Asia-Pacific region. India was the fastest growing market, with a 24% increase. The USA is still the largest market in the world by a huge margin, with 1.4 billion passengers in 2007. China is way behind with 350 million. Despite having such a small population in relative terms, the UK is third with just under 250 million passengers.

The trend for small and medium sized airports to grow fastest continued in 2007. Airports with under five million passengers grew almost three times faster than what ACI describes as “more congested and capacity constrained” airports in the over 40 million passenger category.

Written by: Nick Purdom

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