World tourism day

Tourism and aviation go hand in hand – so on World Tourism Day, we take a look at which European airports and classic tourist destinations topped the lists this summer!

Aviation plays a huge role in tourism, and the latter accounts for many of the 1 billion passengers annually flying in & to Europe – especially over the summer months! So which destinations have been busiest this summer?

A quick glance at our unique aviation data shows that over the summer (May-August), Europe's busiest airports were:

Airport Average daily movements same period in 2018
Frankfurt 1,509 0.9%
Amsterdam-Schiphol 1,485 0.65%
Paris-CDG 1,482 3.7%
London Heathrow 1,359 0.78%
Istanbul airport 1,242 N/A

To put those movements into perspective, August saw the EUROCONTROL Network Manager record an average of 34,892 daily flights across the network, while the daily record remains 37,228 flights, which was set on Friday 28 June 2019.

At the top of the summer country table in terms of average daily movements we have:

Country Average daily movements same period in 2018
The UK 6,523 0.2%
Germany 6,098 0.8%
France 4,859 2.7%
Spain 4,777 2.6%
Italy 4,220 3.6%

Meanwhile the greatest daily increases year-on-year in summer traffic in EUROCONTROL Member States and Comprehensive Agreement States were registered in:

Country Average daily movements same period in 2018
North Macedonia 71 16%
Armenia 83 12.8%
Albania 92 12.8%
Bosnia & Herzegovina 67 12.4%
Morocco 570 11.7%

Our data

Check out our DATA for more cool aviation data and reports!

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