European airport trade body ACI EUROPE today released its air traffic report for May 2025, revealing continued disparities in passenger traffic performance across the European airport market, as well as a significant drop in freight traffic.

Passenger traffic in the European airport network increased by +3.4% in May compared to the same month last year, resulting in volumes standing at +8% above pre‑pandemic (May 2019) levels.

The growth was entirely driven by international passenger traffic (+4.3% vs. May 2024), with domestic passenger traffic slightly decreasing (‑0.2% vs. May 2024).

As in previous months, airports outside the EU+ market outperformed in May with passenger volumes growing by +6%. This reflected impressive growth at airports in Moldova (+41.9%), Bosnia & Herzegovina (+30.5%), Georgia (+23.4%), Israel (+17.5%) and Kazakhstan (+14.5%). Meanwhile, the growth dynamic softened for airports in Türkiye (+1.8%), while those in Russia reported declining volumes (‑9.2%).

The EU+ market saw passenger traffic increasing by +2.9% with the best performances coming from airports in the Eastern part of the bloc: Slovakia (+33%), Hungary (+15.3%), Poland (+13.7%) and Slovenia (+13.5%) — along with Cyprus (+10.9%). Conversely, Estonia (‑6.2%), Luxembourg (‑3.6%), Sweden (‑2%), Switzerland (‑1.4%) and Norway (-0.4%) reported declining volumes. Amongst the largest EU+ markets, the best results came from Italy (+4.4%), Spain (+3.3%) and the UK (+1.7%) while Germany (+0.8%) and France (+0.7%) significantly underperformed, hampered by punitive national aviation taxes.

The integral version of the report (4 pages) is attached to this AVIONEWS.