FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Passenger traffic at Frankfurt Airport remained well below the pre-corona crisis level despite clear growth last year. Although the airport operator Fraport counted around 59.4 million passengers at Germany's largest aviation hub in 2023, more than a fifth more than a year earlier, this was still almost 16 percent less than in the record year 2019 directly before the pandemic, as the MDax-listed company announced in Frankfurt on Tuesday. Fraport CEO Stefan Schulte had recently expected around 60 million passengers. The manager did not expect a return to pre-crisis levels in 2024 either.

In December, Fraport counted around 4.6 million passengers in Frankfurt, only six percent fewer than in the corresponding month before the pandemic. However, Fraport's major customer Lufthansa is again planning for a smaller number of flights in 2024 than in 2019, partly due to bottlenecks in personnel and aircraft.

In the cargo business, Fraport recorded around 1.9 million tons of freight and airmail in Frankfurt last year, almost four percent less than in 2022. Fraport justified this with the weak economic development due to the global geopolitical situation and restrictions in European airspace. However, things picked up again towards the end of the year: after cargo volumes had already risen in November, they increased by 7.2 percent year-on-year to 171,118 tons in December./stw/tav/stk