Commercial flights in the summer still below 2019 level

In September 2023, there were 605,806 commercial flights in the EU. This marked a 7.9% increase when compared with the flight count in September 2022. However, the figure remained 8.9% lower than the flight count for the same month in 2019.

The same trend was visible throughout June – August. All months saw a significant increase compared with 2022 – June (6.9%), July (7.4%) and August (6.6%), but the figures were still below those from 2019: June (-10.4%), July (-9.0%) and August (-8.5%).

This information comes from monthly flight data on commercial flights published by Eurostat today. 

Source dataset: avia_tf_cm

Looking at the country data for September 2023, only 6 countries have exceeded their flight counts from 2019. Greece (+10.9%), Portugal (+9.0%), Cyprus (+5.9%), Croatia (+2.6%), Ireland (+1.4%) and Malta (+0.7%) have surpassed the 2019 figures and have seen an increase in the number of flights. In contrast, Latvia (-30.4%), Finland (-30.2%), Estonia (-25.4%), Sweden (-24.1%) and Slovenia (-22.9%) are far from the 2019 figures.

Source dataset: avia_tf_cm

More information

•  Statistics explained article on air passenger transport - monthly statistics
•  Thematic section on transport
•  Database on air transport 

Methodological notes

• The source of this monthly data on commercial flights is Eurocontrol, a pan-European, civil-military organisation dedicated to supporting European aviation. Data on commercial flights include scheduled and non-scheduled commercial flights (passengers, freight and mail) performed under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). For more information, please refer to the methodological file. Attention to methodological differences should be paid when comparing this monthly data with Eurostat data on passenger, freight and mail air transport collected within Regulation 437/2003. For more information about Eurostat data collection, please refer to this methodological file.

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