Air transport market in Europe and Italy

In 2015, passenger traffic in European countries increased by 5.2% on average, despite the low growth (+3.9%) of air traffic in some non-EU countries, mainly Russia and Ukraine, the impact of the repeated strikes that affected German airlines and terrorist attacks in Paris.
The estimates for 2015 are around 1.95 billion passengers, also thanks to the continuous growth of low-cost carriers.
While EU economy grew by less than +3% between 2008 and 2015, time passenger traffic at EU airports increased by +13.6% over the same period. This disparity is causing a permanent discontinuity in the relationship between GDP growth and passenger traffic. It reflects the existence of new market dynamics and consumer behaviours marking an increased importance of air transport for European economy. Considering the traffic at major airports in major European countries (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Turkey), 2015 shows a slight drop after the strong growth of 2014.
The country with the largest volume of passenger traffic is the United Kingdom, which saw a 5.5% growth in 2015. The next countries both for traffic volumes and growth rates are Germany, Spain, Italy and France. Italy grew by 4.3% in 2015, less than the European average, but more than France and Germany. At evel of five-year variations, European area grew by 18.4% over 5 years, despite the weak growth of continental economy.
Cargo traffic at European level marked a +0.8% in 2015, but Italy and Belgium showed significant progress. In the last five years, the mostly grown countries in freight traffic have been Germany, Netherlands and Italy, which maintained its 6th continental position for traffic volumes. At European Union airports, the average increase in passenger traffic was +5.6%, while non-EU airports grew by +3.9%.

 ⁽¹⁾ Sources: ACI Europe, ICCSAI Fact Book 2015