Traffic 15
Despite continuing weak economic growth across most of Europe, 2011 was a good year for air transport in Switzerland. Genève Aéroport was no exception, registering double-digit growth and passing the 13 million passengers a year mark for the first time. In all, precisely 13,130,222 passengers used Genève Aéroport’s facilities, a rise of 10.5% compared with 2010.
Scheduled aviation – 97% of the passenger total – accounted for most of this growth. Charter traffic saw another fall (-14%), due mainly to passengers switching to low-cost airlines such as EasyJet.
Once again Genève Aéroport’s growth was markedly stronger than that for air transport worldwide (+4.9% in 2011 according to the trade association Airports Council International). This was also the case when compared only with Europe, where a rise of 7.3% stemmed largely from the recovery of traffic lost in April 2010 because of volcanic ash clouds. As in many previous years, the number of aircraft movements (the sum of take-offs and landings) increased at a lower rate (+6.6%), there being a total of 189,121 passenger aircraft movements. The difference between the growth in passenger numbers and these movements confirms the trend towards increased average aircraft size and constantly improving airline load factors at Genève Aéroport. Over five years this change is particularly apparent: between 2006 and 2011 the number of passengers increased by 31.5%, while the number of movements grew by only 7%.
With volumes increasing by 8.3% in 2011, freight continued the healthy pace set the year before. As with the rise in passenger traffic, Genève Aéroport’s cargo growth exceeded the world average.
Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways, KLM, Brussels Airlines, TAP Portugal and Iberia. Following its takeover of Baboo, Darwin Airline came 10th in the list. Ranked by alliance, Star Alliance was far in the lead with 34% of traffic, carried by some 12 members operating at Genève Aéroport. This was followed by Skyteam with 10%, and by Oneworld with 8%. Lowcost airlines, including EasyJet, by far the airport’s largest airline, carried around 40% of all passengers.
A rise benefiting most airlines By an interesting coincidence, the two largest airlines by market share – EasyJet and Swiss – both saw passenger traffic growth of 18%. This considerably exceeded general growth, due notably to the appreciable development of their networks.
Most of the other major airlines benefited from the good performance of air transport. These included KLM (+16%), Brussels Airlines (+15%), Lufthansa (+14%), British Airways (+12%) and TAP (+11%). Air France’s traffic stagnated, due particularly to competition from TGV high-speed trains between Geneva and Paris. In a similar way, Iberia saw a marked fall because of greatly increased airline capacity between Geneva and Madrid. Among the other airlines, Aeroflot (+53%), LOT (+27%) and El Al (+19%) had excellent results.
Market share 2011 (scheduled traffic)
Others 18.7%
38.0% Easyjet
Darwin Airline 1.5% Iberia 2.2% TAP Portugal 2.3%
EasyJet and Swiss still far ahead The ranking of the main airlines operating at Genève Aéroport remained much the same in 2011. EasyJet further strengthened its number one position, with a 38% market share of scheduled passengers. Swiss came second, raising its share and breaking through the 15% barrier. Next were
Brussels Airlines 2.6% KLM Royal Dutch Airlines 3.0% British Airways 4.9% Air France 5.2% Lufthansa 6.1%
15.3% Swiss