EUROCONTROL Forecast Update 2022-2028

European Flight Movements and Service Units - After COVID-19, Russian invasion of Ukraine and Europe’s energy crisis
Airplane passenger looking out of a window

This forecast replaces the June 2022 forecast and now covers 7 years.

It was published in October 2022 and replaced the forecast made in June 2022, before the summer season.

“We have seen strong demand this summer but this has been held back, both by the capacity of the sector to handle the rapid growth and also by the impact of the war in Ukraine. As a result we expect to see about 9.3 million flights this year, 49% more than in 2021 but still 16% fewer than we had in 2019. We are optimistic about traffic recovering to around 92% of 2019 levels next year. But there are still significant downside risks that could affect the recovery”.

Eamonn Brennan Director General, EUROCONTROL

The High scenario envisages moderate GDP growth, a limited impact on demand from inflation, good passenger confidence and limited capacity constraints in 2023 at airports and airlines.

The Baseline scenario is based on GDP being weak, inflation (including jet fuel price) impacting demand and lower passenger confidence/propensity to fly.

The Low scenario considers the impact of several downside risks, including a number of states in recession in 2023, strongly impacted demand for travel (inflation/COVID-19/alternatives to business travel/environmental concerns) and staffing/capacity issues at airlines/airports in 2023.

The traffic figures refer to the number of flights, including both passenger and cargo. Recent experience has been that the recovery in the number of passengers is lagging behind the increase in the number of flights.

For more information, please consult our forecast document, its region definition annex and a statistical table, which includes data by individual State.

This 7-year forecast and corresponding scenarios were produced in October 2021. An updated version of the first part of the horizon (2022-2024 forecast) was published in June 2022.

Dealing with the shorter term (2022), a monthly forecast has been published in April 2022, showing a continuation of recent positive trends, in particular during the holiday period of Summer 2022, reaching 89% of 2019 traffic by August in our Base Scenario, with this level gently rising to end the year at 92%.

EUROCONTROL short-term traffic scenario for *Europe until 2022
% traffic compared to 2019

Files

EUROCONTROL Seven-Year Forecast 2022-2028
EUROCONTROL Seven-Year Forecast 2022-2028: Region definition
EUROCONTROL Seven-Year Forecast 2022-2028: Annex tables