Data extracted in December 2025.
Planned article update: 7 December 2026.
Highlights
Air passenger transport, 2024 (% change compared with previous year)
Country codes
This article analyses recent passenger data on air transport in the European Union (EU), EFTA countries and 4 of the candidate countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Türkiye.
The article differentiates between national (domestic), intra-EU and extra-EU transport, then examines the significance and ranking of airports.
Number of passengers transported by air increased to 1.1 billion in 2024
To prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries around the world put in place a variety of restrictive measures from the beginning of 2020. The air transport industry was severely hit but the first signs of recovery were observed in 2021. In 2022 and 2023, an even more pronounced rebound was observed in the aviation sector. The recovery in air travel continued into 2024, with the EU seeing a 8.3% increase in number of passengers compared with 2023, reaching a total of 1.1 billion (Figure 1), which is higher than the pre-pandemic levels observed in 2019 (1.0 billion passengers). All EU countries registered an increase in passenger numbers carried by air transport compared with 2023. Hungary experienced the highest increase (+19.2%), while Czechia had the second highest (+18.9%). Among the remaining EU countries, 9 recorded an increase between 10% and 18%, and 11 recorded a growth between 5% and 10% over the same period. The 2 remaining EU countries, Sweden and Bulgaria registered an increase of 3.8% and 1.3%, respectively.
All EFTA and the candidate countries also increased in 2024 compared with 2023. Norway and Montenegro recorded the highest growth, both by 15.2%, followed by Switzerland (+8.8%) and Türkiye (+8.4%).
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Figure 2 shows the year-on-year monthly and quarterly growth in air passenger transport for 2024 in the EU. The number of air passengers carried increased every month at EU level. The largest increase was observed in February 2024 (+13.0% compared with the same month in 2023), followed by March (+12.1%) and May (+10.0%). In the remaining months, the increases were between 6.3% in July and October and 9.1% in June.
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Extra-EU passenger transport dominated in 2024, at 49.3%
Figure 3 indicates that extra-EU transport represented 49.3% of total air passenger transport. This was the main origin/destination, ahead of intra-EU transport (36.4%) and domestic transport (14.3%). Compared with 2023, the share of national transport lost 0.7 percentage points (pp) in 2024 to the benefit of extra-EU and intra-EU, which gained 0.3 pp and 0.4 pp, respectively.
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In 2024, all EU countries registered an increase in intra-EU passenger transport compared with 2023. Spain carried the highest number of passengers in 2024 for intra-EU transport with 123.8 million passengers, and Hungary recorded the highest increase of 22.1%, reaching 11.3 million passengers. For intra-EU traffic, 12 EU countries attained increases of more than 10%. The remaining EU countries recorded increases between 3.1% and 9.4%. For extra-EU transport, all EU countries registered an increase, except Lithuania (-5.7%), Bulgaria (-0.7%) and Sweden (-0.6%). Germany carried the highest number of passengers in 2024 for extra-EU transport, totalling 87.1 million. Czechia increased the most by 23.4%, reaching 10.4 million passengers. Out of the 27 EU countries, 10 increased by more than 10% in terms of extra-EU traffic. The remaining EU countries recorded increases between 1.9% and 9.2%. Among all countries, Cyprus experienced the highest increase in national passenger transport with 793 passengers in 2024 while there were only 4 passengers in 2023. Eleven EU countries recorded a drop in domestic passenger transport in 2024 compared with 2024. Slovakia also recorded a large increase, by 70.6%. The largest decrease was observed in the Netherlands (-67.3%), followed by Hungary (-52.7%). The large changes in percentage observed for these 4 countries should be interpreted in the context of their initially low values. There was no national transport reported for Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovenia.
In 2024, international transport activity rose in all EFTA and candidate countries compared with 2023 levels. The highest growth was observed in Norway (+18.2%). When looking at national transport, decreases were recorded in the Iceland (-1.8%) and Serbia (-3.0%). There was no national transport reported by Bosnia and Herzegovina (2023 data), Montenegro and North Macedonia.
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Table 2 presents the top 10 EU country-to-country flows registered in 2024. Among the top 10 routes, Spain is involved in 6, the most significant one being the traffic between Spain and Germany which represented 21.4% of the top 10 passenger routes and 7.6% of all intra-EU transport. Almost all routes showed a substantial increase between 2023 and 2024 from +7.5% to +29.7%. Traffic between Portugal and Spain only increased by 26%, whereas traffic between Portugal and France decreased by 3.5%.
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Map 1 gives a picture of the extra-EU market. Europe except EU was the main origin/destination of passengers travelling by air in 2024, with 56.7% of the total extra-EU transport. The lowest shares were observed for Central Asia and Oceania and southern polar regions (each at 0.1%). Transport with almost all areas in the world increased substantially between 2023 and 2024. In relative terms, the highest increase was recorded for transport with Eastern Asia (+43.0%). Transport with Western Asia, Central America Caribbean and rest of Africa (Africa without North Africa) increased more moderately by 1.1%, 2.8% and 3.3%, respectively.
Table 3 shows that Paris Charles de Gaulle was the largest EU airport, in terms of passengers transported by air in 2024, with 70.3 million. It was followed by Amsterdam Schiphol (66.8 million), Adolfo Suárez Madrid Barajas (66.1 million), Frankfurt Main (61.5 million), Barcelona El Prat (54.9 million), Roma Fiumicino (46.7 million) and München (41.5 million), the only airports registering over 40 million passengers. When looking at the number of passenger flights, the ranking was slightly different. Amsterdam Schiphol was first with 456 000 flights, followed by Paris Charles de Gaulle (422 000 flights), Frankfurt Main (409 000 flights), Adolfo Suárez Madrid Barajas (397 000 flights), Barcelona El Prat (333 000 flights), München (309 000 flights) and Roma Fiumicino (308 flights). These were the only airports with more than 300 000 flights.
Passenger numbers increased in all top EU airports in 2024 compared with 2023, ranging from +20.8% in Roma Fiumicino to +2.6% in Paris Orly. Of the top 30 EU airports, 12 increased by more than 10%. Similar to the overall trend, passenger flight numbers in all airports experienced an increase in 2024 compared with 2023, except in Bratislava M.R. Stefanik (-3.4%) and Paris Orly (-0.9%). The growths varied from a low of +0.7% at Stockholm Arlanda to a high of +18.5% at Roma Fiumicino.
Map 2 presents the top 10 airport pairs within the EU in 2024. It is worth noting that 7 out of 10 routes were domestic ones. The Barcelona El Prat - Palma de Mallorca route carried the most passengers in 2024, with 2.3 million travellers, representing a 1.8% increase from the previous year. All routes registered increases between 2023 and 2024. The highest increase was recorded for the Tenerife Norte - Adolfo Suárez Madrid Barajas connection (25.1%).
Figure 5 presents air passenger transport by type of transport and distance class. For long distances over 2 000 km, 80.5% of the total transport was extra-EU in 2023 and 2024, while it was 78.3% in 2022. For distances between 1 500 and 1 999 km, intra-EU and extra-EU transport had similar shares over the period 2022-2024. In 2023, they had the same share of 47.3%, while in 2024 intra-EU was slightly higher with 47.8% and 48.2% of the total in 2024 and 2023, respectively. Extra-EU showed shares of 46.6% and 46.3% in 2024 and 2023, respectively. Intra-EU transport was predominant in distances inferior to 1 500 km and higher than 499 km. In 2024, it represented 56.1% of total transport in the 1 000-1 499 km distance class, 47.5% in 500-999 km distance class. When looking at distances lower than 500 km in 2024, national transport represented 45.3% in the 300-499 km distance class and 74.3% for distances lower than 300 km. The shares of national, intra-EU and extra-EU transport in each distance band remained relatively stable over the period 2022-2024. The most noticeable changes occurred in 2023 for the 500-999 km class, with a 3.4 pp decrease in the share of national transport compared to 2022 and for the distances below 300 km, with a 2.5 pp decrease in the share of national transport compared to 2022. These decreases benefited to both intra-EU and extra-EU transport.
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Source: Eurostat (avia_paodis)
Source data for tables and graphs
Data sources
More recent passenger data are available in the Eurostat database for several countries, Eurostat encourages reporting countries to provide statistics on passenger transported by air in advance of the regulatory deadline. For some countries the data are available already up to 3 months after the end of a reference month.
Main definitions
The definitions used for air transport statistics are included in Regulation (EC) No 1358/2003 of 31 July 2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 437/2003 of 27 February 2003 on statistical returns in respect of the carriage of passengers, freight and mail by air. The main definitions are the following:
- On Flight Origin and Destination (OFOD): Traffic on a commercial air service identified by a unique flight number subdivided by airport pairs in accordance with the point of embarkation and point of disembarkation on that flight. This is linked to the definition of passengers carried.
- Passengers carried: All passengers on a particular flight counted once only and not repeatedly on each individual stage of that flight. This excludes direct transit passengers.
- Airport coverage: In principle, this article covers air transport to and from any airports in the reporting countries with more than 150 000 passengers annually.
Double counting: the national aggregates and total intra-EU aggregates exclude any double counting. It includes all the departures figures reported plus "a part of" arrivals declarations, "a part of" including those arrivals declarations for which the corresponding departures declarations of the partner airport are missing.
Table 2: the figures (and related shares) for the country-country flows have been calculated by excluding the double counting at country-to-country route level. The figures are derived from table avia_paocc; the double counting for identical routes is excluded in order to obtain the correct total for country pairs. The data can be extracted from the aviation domain of the Eurostat online database or obtained upon request.
Map 1: the component countries comprising the world regions as defined for this map are based on the geonomenclature used by Eurostat for external trade statistics. The components of each world region can be extracted from the aviation domain of the Eurostat online database or obtained upon request. Care should be taken in drawing any conclusions as regards world regional shares due to the fact that passengers who either stop-over or change planes en-route will be allocated to the country in which they made their connections and not to the country of first origin or final destination.
Map 2: the total figures for each pair of airports have been calculated by adding the 'Departures' and ‘Arrivals’ declarations of the airport mentioned first.
In this article
- ":" means "not available"
- "-" means "not applicable"
- "0n" means "less than half the unit used"
- "0" means real zero
Context
All figures presented in this article have been extracted from the Eurostat aviation database. The database is available online from the Eurostat web page.
Explore further
Other articles
Database
- Transport, see detailed datasets:
- Air transport (avia)
- Air transport measurement - passengers (avia_pa)
- Detailed air passenger transport by reporting country and routes (avia_par)
- Air transport measurement - freight and mail (avia_go)
- Air transport measurement - passengers (avia_pa)
Thematic section
Visualisation
Methodology
- Passenger and freight transport by air/Traffic data/Air transport at regional level (ESMS metadata file - avia_pa_esms)
- Reference Manual on Air Transport Statistics - Version 17 (Methodological manual)
- Glossary for transport statistics - 5th edition - 2019
Legislation
- Regulation (EC) No 1358/2003 of 31 July 2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 437/2003 of 27 February 2003 on statistical returns in respect of the carriage of passengers, freight and mail by air.
External links
Selected datasets
- Transport, see selected datasets:
- Air transport (t_avia)
- Air transport of passengers (ttr00012)
- Air transport of goods (ttr00011)