Graz Airport with significant growth
With 733,146 passengers, Graz Airport served around 31% more passengers in 2023 than in 2022. With 19,379 tonnes of freight, the airport even achieved the best result in its history. The positive trend in recent months and the flight submissions for 2024 point to a further recovery towards pre-corona levels.
The aviation sector continued to face multiple challenges in 2023. The after-effects of Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas conflict, general inflation and the development of energy costs are just some of the external influences that are shaping air traffic.
“In this challenging environment, Graz Airport did well in 2023, as the forecast traffic figures were not only achieved, but even exceeded,” reports Wolfgang Grimus, Managing Director of Graz Airport. “The stationing of a Eurowings aircraft and the associated expansion of the route portfolio (new scheduled destinations Berlin and Hamburg as well as an expanded charter offer) was a major and important step into the future. Styria’s export-orientated commercial and industrial companies have again increasingly replaced online meetings with face-to-face appointments with their business partners. In tourist traffic, the passenger figures from 2019 have already been exceeded again.”
“We have also achieved a lot in the non-aviation segment,” says Jürgen Löschnig, Managing Director of Graz Airport. “The number of events held at the airport in 2023 is almost back at the 2019 level. We were able to attract new tenants in the cargo area, the multi-storey car park and the office building. And in the environmental area, the first in-house PV system has been producing electricity since spring, with more in the pipeline.”
CEO Wolfgang Malik is delighted on behalf of Holding Graz as the owner about the continuous “climb” of the airport, which is also important for southern Austria and its neighbouring countries in terms of a strategic outlook: “With the significant increase in passenger and freight traffic, our airport in Graz once again underlines its attractiveness and, above all, its position in the economic and tourism area of an “Area South”. With the Koralm railway from 2026 and the Semmering Tunnel two years later, Graz Airport will have the unique opportunity to act as the central hub of one of the largest new dynamic economic areas in Central Europe at the intersection of the European transversals.”
The 2023 development in detail:
Scheduled and holiday flights:
576,277 passengers chose a scheduled flight for their business or holiday trip. This represents a 30.5% increase on the 2022 result. 156,869 passengers chose a charter flight to take off on holiday (+30.9 %).
A total of 9,655 take-offs and landings were recorded in scheduled and charter traffic, an increase of 12.2 % compared to 2022. This shows that aircraft capacity utilisation has fortunately increased significantly.
Cargo:
At just under 19,400 tonnes, the planned figures for cargo were exceeded with an increase of around 17% compared to the previous year, meaning that Graz Airport achieved the best cargo result in its history in 2023. The arrival of two new tenants in the cargo centre reflects the positive development and sends a positive signal for the future.
General Aviation:
Following a decline of almost 16% in the previous year, the General Aviation segment recorded a comparatively small increase of 6.6% to 33,496 movements. In this area, training and instruction flights increased by around 30% compared to the previous year and returned to the level of 2021. Commercial general aviation flights fell by 17% compared to the previous year.
