Eurocontrol Forecasts 26 Percent More Flights in 2012

A new medium-term forecast issued by Eurocontrol concludes that there will be over 11.4 million flights per year in Europe by 2012, 26% more than 2005, which represents an average annual growth of 3.3%.

The study finds, however, that growth will not be uniform across the region, with some countries such as Romania, Ukraine and Armenia seeing growth of over 50% in the seven-year period, while traffic in others, such as Switzerland or Norway, growing around 20%.

The study also finds that growth in traffic will have a varying impact on airports across the continent.  Madrid Barajas will become the third busiest airport in Europe by the end of 2012, overtaking London's Heathrow and Amsterdam's Schiphol in terms of IFR flights.  Paris Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt Main will remain first and second.  Istanbul Ataturk is also scheduled to grow rapidly and could have constrained capacity by 2010.  After the opening of the new runway in Frankfurt in 2009-2010, the most constrained European airports will be London Heathrow, London Gatwick and Istanbul.

The development of high-speed trains will reduce growth by about 80,000 flights or 1% in total over the seven-year forecast period.  Spain and Italy will see the largest reductions in numbers of flights due to high speed trains - 4% and 2% respectively - with France likely to have a reduction of 1%.  In Spain, the reduction in flights will mainly affect the domestic Madrid-Barcelona route. Today this route is the busiest city pair in terms of air traffic with an average of 127 flights between the two cities each day.

The new medium-term forecast is available by going here.  04-01-2006.

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