Swedavia’s traffic statistics for December and for the full-year 2020

During December, 408,000 passengers flew via Swedavia’s ten airports, a decrease of 86 per cent compared to 2,852,000 passengers for the same period in 2019. The full-year was strongly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic with a decrease of more than 30 million passengers, meaning air travel in Sweden during 2020 was back to levels last seen in the early 1980s.

“Air travel has been hit extremely hard by the pandemic and due to the escalating spread of Covid-19 and subsequent travel restrictions implemented, passenger volume decreased 86 per cent in December. The course of the pandemic, combined with new and expanded restrictions, is contributing to continued enormous uncertainty about the market situation in early 2021. The winter months are also always a seasonally weak period for air travel,” says Jonas Abrahamsson, Swedavia’s president and CEO.

“However, we can see conditions in place for an emerging normalisation and recovery in air travel in time for the summer season. But the performance of the air transport sector depends entirely on the pandemic and the major vaccination efforts now being made. So we also anticipate continued great uncertainty in terms of demand and expect the pandemic to have a significant impact on air travel this year as well,” notes Jonas Abrahamsson.

Of the total 408,000 passengers who flew in December, 262,000 were international passengers, a decrease of 86 per cent compared to 1,937,000 in 2019. Domestic travel decreased 84 per cent to 146,000 passengers compared to 916,000 domestic passengers during the same period in 2019.

For the full-year 2020, air travel at Swedavia’s airports decreased 74 per cent, by more than 30 million passengers, to 10,255,000 passengers compared to 40,157,000 passengers in 2019. Not since the beginning of the 1980s has air travel in Sweden been around the 10 million passenger mark for a single year.

At Stockholm Arlanda Airport, air travel decreased 85 per cent to 271,000 passengers in December compared to the same period in 2019. For the full year, there was a 75 per cent decrease to 6,535,000 passengers compared to 25,643,000 passengers in 2019. International travel decreased 76 per cent while domestic travel decreased to a somewhat lesser extent, 67 per cent.

At Göteborg Landvetter Airport, air travel decreased 87 per cent in December to 61,000 passengers and 76 per cent for the full year to 1,577,000 compared to 6,671,000 passengers in 2019. During 2020, both international and domestic travel decreased 76 per cent to 1,292,000 and 285,000 passengers respectively.

Bromma Stockholm Airport was the airport that showed the biggest decrease both in December and for the period January-December, with a decrease of 97 per cent and 80 per cent respectively.

At Swedavia’s seven regional airports, passenger volume decreased between 68 per cent and 92 per cent to a total of 71,000 passengers in December. For the year, air travel overall decreased 70 per cent to 1,664 000 passengers at the regional airports compared to 5,491,000 passengers for the same period in 2019.

Kiruna Airport and Luleå Airport were the regional airports that did best in December and over the past twelve months, although demand at these airports also remained very limited.

Traffic statistics for Swedavia’s airports are available (in Swedish) under “Om Swedavia/Statistik”: https://www.swedavia.se/om-swedavia/statistik/. 

More information about the measures Swedavia has taken for our passengers is available at www.swedavia.se. See for example: https://www.swedavia.com/arlanda/before-your-journey/.

For many years, Swedavia has carried out ambitious sustainability work, with the goal being to have all ten of its airports produce zero emissions of fossil carbon dioxide from their own operations by the end of 2020. Swedavia also works actively to promote the industry’s transition to sustainable aviation fuel and has the goal that five per cent of all fuel used to refuel aircraft at Swedish airports shall be fossil-free by 2025. Since 2016, Swedavia buys renewable aviation fuel equivalent to the amount used for the company’s business travel, about 450 tonnes of fuel each year.

For further information, please contact Swedavia’s press office at +46 (0)10-109 01 00 or press@swedavia.se.