Data received from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has revealed that recovery of air travel was at its peak in the last month of 2023.

Consequently, the overall traffic in 2023 came quite close to the levels recorded in air travel before the pandemic.

Air traffic

The report went on to disclose that the traffic in 2023, on a global level, went up by 36.9% as compared to the corresponding period of 2022.

Back then, the numbers surged by 94.1% in comparison to the air traffic levels recorded in the year 2019.

At the same time, the traffic in December 2023 showed a hike of 25.3%, reaching over 97% of the figures registered in the last month of 2019.

Meanwhile, the traffic for the fourth quarter of 2019 stood at over 98%, which indicated a robust recovery at the end of the year.

On this note, the Director General of IATA, Willie Walsh, took to discussing the strong rebound after the pandemic, which took place in 2023.

In his words, the traffic in December was only 2.5% less than the numbers recorded in 2019, with the fourth quarter showing significant improvement.

Consequently, experts forecasted that the traffic numbers for airlines would soon return to their usual growth patterns, as they were before the pandemic, by the end of 2024.

International traffic

As per the statistics revealed by the IATA, international traffic in the previous year also showed an increase of 41.6% compared to 2022.

Thus, it hit 88.6% of the air traffic levels recorded in 2019. Meanwhile, in December 2023, the traffic on a global level showed an increase of 24.2%.

Due to this hike, air traffic stood at 94.7% of the 2019 levels, while the figures recorded at the end of the fourth quarter showed that the numbers were at 94.5% of 2019 levels.

Additional data published in the IATA report revealed that domestic air traffic also showed a substantial increase in the previous year.

In line with this growth, the number saw a rise of 30.4% as compared to 2022 and surpassed the levels of 2019 by no less than 3.9%.

In this regard, December 2023 showed an increase in domestic traffic by 27%, as compared to 2022, and thus, standing at 2.3% over the levels of 2019.

Moreover, the domestic traffic at the end of the fourth quarter of 2023 indicated a growth of 4.4% in comparison to the corresponding period of 2019.

Airports

On this note, the latest full-year report revealed by ACI Europe also revealed that passenger activity had gone up within the network in the EU.

The network has shown significant growth in December 2023 and recorded an impression increase of over 19% year-on-year.

As per the report, this surge has shown an increase in total volume, which stood at only 5% below the levels recorded before the pandemic.

The same source also disclosed that the growth was primarily attributed to international air traffic, displaying a remarkable surge of 21%.