Swedavia’s traffic statistics for March 2021

In March, nearly 341,000 passengers flew via Swedavia’s airports, a 90 per cent decrease compared to corresponding pre-pandemic passenger levels in March 2019. Compared to March 2020, which was also greatly affected by the pandemic, the decrease was 74 per cent. Overall, air travel remains at historically low levels, and market prospects are still uncertain due to the course of the pandemic and travel restrictions.

“After more than a year with the pandemic, air travel is still strongly limited, and in March our airports had barely one tenth of what was normal traffic for the same period before the pandemic. In time for the summer season, many airlines are now planning to return to our airports, and the airlines’ traffic programmes are gradually being expanded. However, vaccine efforts, the easing of travel restrictions and some form of health certificate are still needed for a larger scale resumption of air travel. For right now, it is still a question of the whole of society limiting and fighting the spread of the virus,” says Jonas Abrahamsson, Swedavia’s president and CEO.

All ten of Swedavia’s airports reported large decreases in passenger volume during the month, and the traffic trend in every traffic area was sharply downward. There was almost no air traffic to destinations elsewhere in the Nordic region or outside Europe. Domestic traffic and traffic to non-Nordic European destinations saw a somewhat better trend in relative terms during the month.

The passenger trend was less negative compared to March 2020 than to March 2019, since March last year was also greatly affected by the pandemic while 2019 was a “normal” year. In terms of passenger volume, Swedavia had more than 1.3 million passengers in March 2020 and nearly 3.3 million in March 2019.

Altogether, the number of passengers at Swedavia’s airports has decreased by 36 million since February last year.