European airport trade association, ACI EUROPE today releases its traffic report for December, Q4, H2 and Full Year 2019.
Freight traffic remained negative all along 2019 with the exception of December (+0.5%), the first positive monthly since October 2018. EU airports dragged the performance down in 2019 at –3.2% (and still negative in December at -0.7%) while non-EU airports remained mostly positive at +1.9% (increasing to +7.6% in December).
These results point to the freight downturn finally bottoming out and possibly moving towards a recovery as trade tensions are finally easing and the global economy is expected to pick up in 2020 – subject to the Coronavirus being effectively contained.
Out of the top 10 European airports for freight traffic, only Liège (+3.5%) and Madrid (+7.7%) posted increases. Apart from these, the highest increases came from Lisbon (+14.1%), Zaragoza (+9.5%) and Helsinki (+8.4%).
