Image: (APA/GEORG HOCHMUTH)
Last year, the six Austrian airports counted 33.2 million passengers, a quarter more than in 2022, as Statistics Austria announced on Friday. Freight volumes also increased slightly, while airmail volumes declined.
“After the pandemic-related restrictions, aviation has steadily recovered from 2021 and is now flying high again,” said Statistics Austria General Director Tobias Thomas, according to the broadcast. With almost 92 percent of the record year 2019, the number of passengers in 2023 will have reached the second highest value since records began in 1955.
With 259,000 flight movements in scheduled and occasional flights, 16.8 percent more take-offs and landings were carried out than in 2022. In 2019, the number of takeoffs and landings was around 320,000. The number of passengers carried per flight has increased continuously in recent years. Last year, an average of around 128 people traveled, in 2022 there were 119.5 and in the year before the corona pandemic there were only 113.2 passengers.
Plus of 12 percent in Linz
All six domestic airports recorded increases in 2023. The number of passengers at Vienna Airport climbed by around 25 percent to 29.5 million. In Salzburg the increase was 31 percent, where 1.6 million travelers were counted. In Innsbruck there were 0.9 million, which corresponds to an increase of around 26 percent. In Graz the number of passengers was 0.7 million, which was 31 percent more. The two smallest airports, Linz and Klagenfurt, recorded around 230,000 (plus 12 percent) and around 150,000 (plus 85 percent) passengers.
The air freight volume was 218,000 tons in 2023, increasing by 1.7 percent compared to the previous year. Compared to 2019, this corresponds to a decrease of 11.6 percent. The majority of the freight went to Vienna Airport. Airmail reached around 6,200 tons, 6.8 percent below the previous year.
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The travel boom also has its downsides. According to mineral oil statistics, more kerosene was refueled in this country by July 2023 alone than in the whole of 2021. Extrapolated to the year as a whole, it is likely to be over 800,000 tonnes, which corresponds to a CO2 footprint of 2.5 million tonnes of CO2. The aviation industry is one of the largest carbon dioxide emitters in Austria, alongside voestalpine, Wien Energie and OMV.
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