The number of passengers is increasing, but only slowly. The return to pre-Covenant numbers will take place in five years at the earliest, says Prague Airport
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Last year, Prague Airport handled almost 4.5 million passengers. This is more than in 2020, but still well below the numbers it was used to before the pandemic.
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From the point of view of the passengers themselves, the most popular country has become Spain over the past 12 calendar months. As for specific cities, there was also Amsterdam
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This year, Václav Havel Prague Airport wants to adjust 8.6 million people to the world, but it will not return to pre-pandemic numbers until 2026, thinks its boss Jiří Pos.
The air transport sector is recovering from the biggest challenge in its history of about a hundred years. However, it is only very slow. This is evidenced, for example, by numbers published on Thursday by Václav Havel Airport Prague. The largest air port in the country managed to handle exactly 4,388,826 passengers last year, ie 19.7 percent more than the year before.
Under normal circumstances, such an increase could be included among those in the realm of dreams, but then it was put into context, one suddenly found that the numbers were in fact sad. Compared to the time before the covid, ie in 2019, the number of passengers is decreasing by a massive 75.4 percent.
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Similar statistics also provide an indicator of so-called movements, which hide nothing but the number of takeoffs and landings of individual aircraft – even that is better than the year before, by 13 percent. The downside, however, is that the latest value of 61,164 movements is less than 40 percent of what Prague Airport was used to three years ago.
It attracted mainly Spain or Amsterdam
Among the most popular destinations to which passengers from Prague flew in the past 12 calendar months were traditional holiday countries such as Spain, Greece and Italy. As for specific cities, they went most often to Amsterdam, Paris, or London. There is a logical justification for this – this is where the main European transfer hubs are located, through which they then continue to their destination.
“During the year, outbound tourism prevailed. In some holiday destinations, they saw an increase in interest in the order of one hundred percent, “highlights one of the more positive findings by the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Prague Airport Jiří Pos.
New carriers and destinations
Despite the ever-increasing travel restrictions associated with lower-than-usual activity, the management of Prague’s air port has prepared several newspapers for the passage last year. “We have welcomed five brand new carriers and added connections to six new destinations, including remote exotic destinations,” Poz said.
Thanks to this, people from Václav Havel Airport can now also travel on board the aircraft of the Ukrainian low-cost aircraft Bees Airline, the Romanian company Blue Air, the Greek Bluebird Airways or Israeli. In addition to them, EgyptAir machines are also flying from Prague.
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As for the individual destinations, starting in 2021, passengers will get direct connections from our capital to Hamburg, Lviv, Nice, but also to Zanzibar, the Maldives or the famous resort of Punta Cana found in the Dominican Republic.
The current attenuation is only temporary
The busiest day of last year was Sunday, August 22, when 30,987 passengers passed through the gates of Prague Airport. That is almost 40,000 less people than this airport has managed to handle June 28, 2019, which day was also the busiest of the whole year. Unfortunately, according to Pose, several more years will pass before the airport returns to similar statistics.
“We expect a return to pre-prime numbers in 2026 at the earliest,” he explains to Euro.cz. How does he see the current one?
“We plan to handle 8.6 million passengers this year. Whether this will work is difficult at the moment. January and February are generally weak months and due to the omicron some airlines reduce the frequency of flights. But we believe that it will be only temporary and since the summer flight schedule, ie from April, traffic will run to the expected numbers, “predicts Pos and adds:” so many times two years a day. I also believe that we will be able to negotiate other long-distance lines. The connections to Saudi Arabia and Vietnam are well under way. ”