Two EX-YU airports within Europe’s top 100 busiest
Two airports in the former Yugoslavia have placed among the top 100 busiest on the continent, according to Airports Council International Europe (ACI). With a total of 3.285.295 passengers, Belgrade Airport ranked 71st ahead of the likes of Edinburgh, Krakow, Malta, Minsk and Riga, but just behind Venice and Sofia. On the other hand, Pristina Airport entered the top 100 for the first time, positioning itself as the 88th busiest with 2.176.036 travellers handled. It was ahead of of Glasgow, Keflavik (Reykjavik) and Vilnius but just behind Rome Ciampino, and Yerevan. This year, Belgrade Airport is expected to reach pre-pandemic capacity levels, while Pristina Airport is highly likely to register its busiest on record and overtake its pre-Covid results.
Elsewhere, Split Airport, as the third busiest in the former Yugoslavia, ranked just outside of the top 100 on 103rd place. It was followed by Zagreb, which positioned itself on 112th, while Skopje was on its heels, placing 113th. Dubrovnik was Europe’s 129th busiest airport, while Sarajevo 132nd. Ljubljana Airport, which fell out of the top ten busiest in the former Yugoslavia in 2021 was Europe’s 154th busiest, just behind Sinop Airport in Turkey and ahead of Rennes Airport in France. As previously reported, airports in the former Yugoslavia handled a combined total of just over 14.8 million passengers in 2021, up 97.3% on the year before but still down 49.7% on the pre-pandemic 2019.
Istanbul became Europe’s busiest airport in 2021, followed by Moscow Sheremetyevo, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam and Moscow Domodedovo. With a 34.6% decrease in traveller numbers compared to 2019, airports outside of the European Union significantly outperformed the continent’s average which stood at a 64.6% passenger decline on pre-Covid levels. Olivier Jankovec, the Director General of ACI Europe, said, “After losing 1.72 billion passengers in 2020, we all had high hopes for a strong recovery in 2021. But last year proved another difficult one, as Europe’s airports ended up losing another 1.4 billion passengers compared to 2019. This means they remain under considerable stress, with systemic financial weakness across our industry”. He added, “The knee-jerk reaction of many governments who ignored the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control guidance and rushed to reimpose travel bans and other restrictions in late 2021, including for intra-European travel, has stalled our recovery. Yet, these travel restrictions did nothing to stop the spread of Omicron, as recognised just last week by the World Health Organisation”. The most affected European market in 2021 was Finland, followed by the United Kingdom, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Ireland.
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