Air traffic Zurich Airport carries more passengers in September

Once again, more passengers traveled through Zurich Airport in September than a year ago. The pre-crisis level of 2019 was exceeded.

A total of 2.95 million people traveled through Switzerland's largest airport in the month under review, as announced by the airport on Thursday evening. This was 4.6% more than in September a year ago.

The airport thus exceeded the pre-pandemic level: Passenger numbers were 102.0 percent of the September 2019 level, the second time since the corona pandemic that more people have traveled through Zurich Airport in a month. Passenger numbers were already higher in May than in May 2019.

The increase in travelers was mainly due to local passengers. Their number increased by 7.4% to 2.1 million. Meanwhile, the number of passengers transferring in Zurich fell by 1.8% to around 841,000.

Fewer flights than in 2019

23,778 flights were operated at the airport in September, 2.0% more than in the previous year. While passenger numbers were higher than before the pandemic, the number of flights was slightly lower, at 98% of the pre-crisis level. "The reason for this is that, on the one hand, we are operating with larger aircraft and, on the other, the aircraft are better utilized," the airport explains in the press release.

Compared to the previous year, the average number of passengers per flight increased by 0.6 percent to 141.4 in the month under review. Seat occupancy was 83.6 percent in the month under review, 1 percentage point higher than the previous year.

Commercial revenue increases

Turnover from commercial activities at the airport amounted to CHF 57.1 million in September. This corresponds to an increase of 2.3 percent. The lion's share of this, 34.4 million, was generated in the non-public area, the so-called airside. Sales there increased by 4.8 percent.

In the so-called landside area, i.e. the shopping area that is also open to non-traveling visitors, which also includes the "Circle", sales fell by 1.3 percent to 22.7 million francs.

SDA