Air traffic in the Czech Republic continues to increase. Prague Václav Havel Airport handled over 3.12 million passengers in the year’s first five months. This represents a year-on-year increase of 544 percent, Prague Airport reported.

Flight traffic over the Czech Republic also more than doubled, with air traffic controllers dispatching over 205,298 flights. Despite the recent growth, however, both traffic statistics continue to lag behind the pre-Christmas figures.

The number of passengers at Ruzyně Airport is growing every month this year. In May, for the first time in more than two years, the airport approached the one million passengers handled in a calendar month. More than 928,000 passengers were the most since February 2020, before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe.

The UK is among the most popular countries this year, followed by Italy and Spain. London leads the destinations, with Paris in second place and Amsterdam in third.

According to its latest spring estimates, Prague Airport is expected to handle over 9.6 million passengers for the entire year, a million more than it forecast at the start of the year. Before the pandemic, however, the airport handled more than 17.8 million passengers 2019.

The gradual recovery of air traffic is confirmed by the upward statistics over the Czech Republic. While the more than 205,000 flights to date through the end of May are roughly 61 percent of the traffic from the pre-covid period, the gap is regularly narrowing. Last May, Air Traffic Control (ATC) handled nearly 60,000 flights, which was 75 percent of the pre-Coastal traffic.

In addition, traffic is currently expected to continue to grow, as confirmed by statistics from airports in most European countries. Because of this, many airports now face staff shortages at check-in and check-out, with redundancies during pandemic restrictions.

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