Keystone-SDA
This content was published on
10. October 2024 – 20:44
(Keystone-SDA) More passengers traveled through Zurich Airport in September than a year ago. The pre-crisis level of 2019 was exceeded.
A total of 2.95 million people traveled through Switzerland’s largest airport in the reporting month, as it announced on Thursday evening. That was 4.6 percent more than in September a year ago.
The airport has thus exceeded the pre-pandemic level: passenger volumes were 102.0 percent of the September 2019 level. It is the second time since the corona pandemic that more people have traveled through Zurich Airport in a month. The number of passengers in May was already higher than in May 2019.
The increase in travelers was primarily due to local passengers. Their number increased by 7.4 percent to 2.1 million. The number of passengers changing flights in Zurich fell by 1.8 percent to around 841,000.
Fewer flights than in 2019
23,778 flights were carried out at the airport in September, 2.0 percent more than in the previous year. While the number of passengers was higher than before the pandemic, the number of flights was slightly lower, namely 98 percent of the pre-crisis level. “The reason for this is that, on the one hand, larger aircraft are used and, on the other hand, the aircraft are better utilized,” the airport explains in the statement.
Compared to the previous year, the average number of passengers per flight increased by 0.6 percent to 141.4 in the reporting month. Seat occupancy was 83.6 percent in the reporting month, 1 percentage point above the previous year.
Commercial sales increase
The turnover from commercial activities at the airport was 57.1 million francs in September. This corresponds to an increase of 2.3 percent. Of this, the majority of 34.4 million was achieved in the non-publicly accessible area, the so-called airside. Sales there increased by 4.8 percent.
In the so-called landside area, i.e. the shopping area that is also public for non-travelling visitors, which also includes the “Circle”, sales fell by 1.3 percent to 22.7 million francs.
