Air traffic grows but remains below normal levels

“Air traffic is still increasing compared to last year. Air traffic in the first three months of the year combined is now 15 per cent behind 2019 levels. We expect air traffic to remain below 2019 levels for the remainder of the year, but in the period from June to August we expect to be just 5-7 per cent below pre-pandemic levels,” says Gaute Skallerud Riise, VP for Traffic Development at Avinor.

“Leisure travel to Norway is expected to be the key driver behind future development. This was also true prior to the pandemic and is a trend that will endure. This is very gratifying for the tourism industry and will over time become a more important export area for Norway. Right now, the weak Norwegian krone is also an important driving factor in this respect,” Riise asserts.

“The combined passenger figures for the year will probably end up being around 8-10 per cent lower than in 2019. There is uncertainty in this respect partly due to geopolitical unrest and the uncertainty of what a reduction in spending power among Norwegian and global consumers will entail,” Riise concludes.

Aircraft movements

There were 53,376 commercial aircraft movements in March 2023. This is an increase of 8 per cent from March 2022. Compared to March 2019, there has been a drop in the number of aircraft movements of 7 per cent.

International traffic

1,412,695 passengers have travelled between Avinor’s airports and international destinations in March. In the same month last year, there were just under 1 million international passengers. This means that international traffic has increased by 43 per cent compared to last year when aviation was still impacted by the pandemic and travel restrictions.

Compared to 2019, there is a 17 per cent decline in international traffic in March.

Domestic traffic

There were 2,513,418 passengers on domestic flights in March this year. This is an increase of 12 per cent from March last year.

Compared to March 2019, there has been a decline of 10 per cent.

Year to date

A comparison of total passenger number this year to-date with the same period in 2019 shows that we are currently 15 per cent behind the 2019 benchmark year.

Passenger figures in March from the major airports are set out below, in addition to figures for regional airports (labelled as DRL) with 2022 as a comparison year:

Compared with 2019: