By Edward Robertson
Swedavia has reported a 90 per cent decrease in passenger numbers for March 2021 compared to March, 2019, when 3.3 million travellers were processed before the pandemic struck.
Nearly 341,000 passengers passing through its 10 airports during the month, which also represented a 74 per cent drop on March 2020’s 1.3 million passengers as the Covid-19 began to bite.
Destinations in the Nordic region and outside of Europe were worst hit while domestic and non-Nordic European travel held up best.
Swedavia president and CEO Jonas Abrahamsson said: “After more than a year with the pandemic, air travel is still strongly limited, and in March our airports had barely one tenth of what was normal traffic for the same period before the pandemic.
“In time for the summer season, many airlines are now planning to return to our airports, and the airlines’ traffic programmes are gradually being expanded.
“However, vaccine efforts, the easing of travel restrictions and some form of health certificate are still needed for a larger scale resumption of air travel.
“For right now, it is still a question of the whole of society limiting and fighting the spread of the virus.”
The latest fall in figures means Swedavia has lost a total number of 36 million passengers since February 2020.
