Great news for travellers! Hungarian air traffic on the rise

Last year a record number of people have travelled by plane in the European Union, according to Turizmus Online. As Eurostat stated, the number of passengers in the air increased by 6 percent, becoming almost one billion.

972.7 million people travelled by plane in the EU in 2016. This number is 54.4 million higher than in the year before (2015) and 219.2 million higher than the negative record in 2009, the year of the Financial Crisis.

47 percent of the total traffic was travelling from one EU member country to another, 35.6 percent was travelling beyond the European Union’s borders and 17.3 percent was travelling within a country.

Bulgaria produced the highest increase in the number of passengers with 22.5 percent, followed by Romania (20.5 percent) and Cyprus (18.1 percent). Hungary is right below the first three with its 14.1 percent of increase. Only two EU member countries produced decrease: Belgium (2.7 percent of decrease) and Slovenia (2.2 percent).

The United Kingdom produced the largest air traffic with 249 million passengers, which was followed by Germany (201 million), Spain (194 million), France (145 million) and Italy (135 million).

The airport with the largest number of travelers in a year has been Heathrow in London for years; it witnessed the departure and/or arrival of 75.7 million passengers in 2016.