Traffic up at Frankfurt Airport despite flight cancellations due to strikes

Some 4.6 million passengers passed through Frankfurt Airport in March 2024 – 7.8% more than during the same month a year ago.

Operator, Fraport, notes that the upturn in traffic is even more impressive as strikes caused the cancellation of about 2,200 flights from FRA during the month, disrupting the travel plans of almost 300,000 passengers.

It attributes the monthly growth to the early timing of the Easter holidays, occurring in March this year rather than April.

Cargo volumes at Frankfurt continued their positive trend in March 2024, rising by 6.3%year-on-year to 178,898 tonnes.

Aircraft movements climbed by 5.7% year-on-year to 33,969 takeoffs and landings. Likewise, accumulated maximum takeoff weights (MTOWs) grew by 5.8% year-on-year to around 2.2 million tonnes.

The majority of Fraport’s Group airports worldwide also recorded traffic growth in March 2024, with Ljubljana Airport (LJU) in Slovenia experiencing a 22.7% year-on-year rise in passengers.

Elsewhere, traffic at Lima Airport (LIM) in Peru soared by 19% to about 1.9 million passengers in March, Antalya Airport in Turkey saw a huge 23.4% rise in passengers and throughput at Fraport’s 14 Greek regional airports topped 820,438 passengers – up 12.2% on March 2023.

It wasn’t all plane sailing though as total traffic at the two Brazilian airports of Fortaleza (FOR) and Porto Alegre (POA) slipped by 4.4% and between them its two Bulgarian airports of Burgas (BOJ) and Varna (VAR) registered a 28.9% decline in travellers.

As a result, total traffic at the airports actively managed by the Fraport Group grew by 10.3% year-on-year to approximately 9.8 million passengers in March 2024.