Air traffic Zurich Airport with 5 percent more take-offs and landings in July

In July, there were significantly more aircraft take-offs and landings at Zurich Airport than in the same period last year. However, Kloten is still not counting quite as many flights as before the coronavirus crisis, even during the summer vacation period.

A total of 24,221 aircraft movements were handled on Zurich Airport's runways in July. This is 3.8 percent more than in June, which is probably mainly due to the summer vacation-related increase in tourist traffic. July is the month with the most flight movements every year.

Compared to the previous year, however, significantly more aircraft took off and landed: The increase compared to July 2023 is 5.0 percent. There was also a significant increase over the year as a whole: the total number of aircraft movements from January to July rose by 6.9% compared to 2023. This is shown by an analysis of data from the news agency AWP.

However, in summer 2019, the year before the coronavirus crisis, air traffic at Zurich Airport was even higher: at that time, there were 25,087 take-offs and landings, 3.6% more movements than in the current year.

Flight cancellations due to IT breakdown

The IT glitch, which was triggered by a failed update from the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike and disrupted flight schedules worldwide on July 19, also led to flight cancellations at Zurich Airport. The airport reported at least 120 canceled flights to and from Zurich on that day, when take-offs also had to be temporarily suspended in Zurich.

With 341 take-offs and 329 landings, July 19 was the busiest day of the month. On the other days, between 350 and 420 take-offs and landings were recorded.

The flight movement figures at Zurich Airport are based on daily updated statistics in which all flights are recorded according to instrument flight rules. This so-called IFR traffic includes scheduled flights as well as cargo, business and private flights. However, the number of flight movements says nothing about the size of the aircraft handled and their capacity utilization.

Zurich Airport will publish detailed passenger and traffic figures for the month of June on August 13.

SDA