The popular gateway to the South of France, Nice Côte d’Azur Airport saw passenger traffic throughout July and August grow by nearly 4% compared to the same period in 2023.
In the two peak summer months, 3.46 million passenger passed through the airport, including a record number of passengers on Friday 2 August.
“The fleets arriving in our terminals are mainly made up of the latest aircraft and are almost 86% full,” commented Franck Goldnadel, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Aéroports de la Côte d’Azur. “There is therefore still room for improvement. These are important drivers for reducing the environmental impact of a transport method that is essential for opening up our region.”
With traffic at the French hub achieving close to the levels seen in 2019, Goldnadel added the airport is reaching saturation levels.
“This is often problematic despite the efforts of our team,” he said. “We hope that hte ongoing work to upgrade Terminal 2 will make it possible to welcome visitors to the French Riviera with facilities that are more in line with our region’s needs, once the work is completed next summer.”
Out of 21 new routes at the airport, 12 were launched for the 2024 summer season and there are also 13 long-haul routes to North America and the Gulf states. According to the airport operator, these direct low-emission routes are operated by wide-body aircraft, optimising the number of travellers compared to the number of aircraft movements.
Passenger traffic to and from the US rose by 44.1% compared to 2023. The airport now serves four destinations including a new one, Philadelphia. Meanwhile, passenger traffic to and from Canada rose by 22.9% with an increase in the number of weekly flights.
As for the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia saw traffic rise by 120.2%, while Qatar increased its traffic by 60.7% and the UAE by 17.4%.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Europe still accounts for most of the airport’s passenger traffic and is driving growth. This has been boosted by new routes with Spain, Greece and Italy accounting for the top three. The French market accounts for 22% of business, a drop of 10.2% compared to 2023 domestic volumes.
The airport shows no signs of slowing down operations as it enters the latter half of the year, with 11 new routes already announced for the upcoming winter season. easyJet will be operating flights to Agadir, Lanzarote, Madrid, Prague , Rovaniemi and Strasbourg. Transavia France is launching a new route to Dakar, while Air Serbia will connect Nice to Belgrade and Eurowings will serve a link to Bonn/ Cologne. Twin Jet is extending its summer service to Toulouse and Wizz Air is extending its summer route to Tirana.
Nice’s winter schedule now includes 76 destinations to 35 countries operated by 41 airlines.
