Upward trend in international arrivals at airports after 14 months

Following the trend of all previous months, the overall data for passenger traffic for the first four months of 2021, Greek airports recorded a drop of 69.4%. But after 14 months of the pandemic, there was an upward trend in passenger traffic from abroad in April compared to April 2020, when there was a global lockdown. Of course, compared to April 2019, when there were no restrictive measures, arrivals remained at extremely low levels.

In particular, the statistics of the Civil Aviation Authority for airport passenger traffic in the four months of January-April 2021 show that the total number of passengers reached 1,663,764 passengers, showing a decrease of 69.4%, compared to the corresponding period. of 2020, handling 5,444,514 passengers.

As concerns flights at Greek airports, they amounted to 41,564 of which 30,951 were domestic and 10,613 international, showing a decrease of 37.2%, compared to the corresponding period of 2020, when there were a total of 66,160 flights.

April recorded an upward trend in international passenger arrivals of + 1,751.2%.

It is characteristic that April 2021 is the month that according to passenger traffic statistics began to show an upward trend in arrivals compared to the same month last year, as Greece began to receive travelers from certain countries without need of quarantine, provided they have completed their vaccination or show a negative test report, while in April 2020 there was a universal lockdown.

With these data, the April statistics show that there were 101,521arrivals of foreign passengers, while in April 2020 only 5,484 passengers had arrived, an increase of 1,751.2%.

The total number of flights (domestic and international) amounted to 12,569, also recording an increase of 126.1% compared to the corresponding period of 2020 where 5,559 flights were operated. Although compared to last April, when there was a universal traffic restriction and the aircraft were stranded internationally, this year the data show improved, but compared to April 2019 when there was no Covid-19 disease and flight restrictions, arrivals of international passengers show a decrease of 83.8%.