Zurich airport sees sizeable jump in activity in 2023
The airport at Kloten, just outside Zurich, is Switzerland's biggest.
Keystone/gaetan Bally
The number of flights in and out of Switzerland’s biggest airport increased by 14.5% in 2023, but activity is still 10% lower than pre-pandemic years.
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A total of 241,005 aircraft took off and landed in Zurich last year, according to figures from the airport website analysed by news agency AWP. In 2019, it was 268,968.
In the wake of travel restrictions to contain the spread of coronavirus in 2020, flights had plummeted to 40% of the 2019 level. Since then, traffic has steadily recovered – in 2022, the gap compared to 2019 was still around a fifth.
The highest traffic volume in 2023 was achieved at the start of the autumn holidays on October 6, when a total of 831 flights were operated to and from Zurich. On a month-by-month basis, the summer holiday month of July was busiest.
However, the end-of-year spurt in December was also impressive: the airport counted a total of 18,682 flight movements in the Christmas month – around 8% more than in the previous year. This means December was only around 6% short of pre-Covid levels. The peak day in December was Friday, December 22.
Zurich Airport will publish detailed passenger and traffic figures for December and for the year as a whole on January 15.
The flight movement figures at Zurich Airport used for this article are based on daily updated statistics, in which all flights are recorded according to instrument flight rules. In addition to scheduled traffic, this so-called IFR traffic also includes cargo, business and private flights. The number of flight movements says nothing about the size or capacity of the aircraft.
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