At 48.9 million, they were 97.2 percent higher than in the previous year, as the Group announced on Monday. Thanks to the lifting of coronavirus travel restrictions, demand from private travelers increased dynamically from March onwards. More business travelers were added at the end of the year. Fraport CEO Stefan Schulte was confident about the current year: "With the widespread desire to travel behind us, we expect further growth in 2023." Fraport is working hard to prepare for this. Last year, operations in Frankfurt, as at many other airports, were disrupted due to staff shortages. "It will remain challenging," added Schulte.

The number of passengers for the year as a whole was still a good 30 percent down on the pre-crisis year of 2019. Cargo volume fell by 13.3 percent in 2022. The reasons for this were the airspace closures due to the war in Ukraine, the coronavirus lockdowns in China and the economic slowdown.

The airports abroad in which Fraport holds a stake also left the coronavirus crisis further behind them. With 31 million passengers, Antalya Airport in Turkey recorded only twelve percent fewer passengers than in 2019. The 14 Greek regional airports even achieved slight growth of 3.5 percent compared to the pre-crisis year with around 31 million passengers.

(Report by Scot W. Stevenson, Ilona Wissenbach, edited by Ralf Banser. If you have any queries, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)