Groningen Airport Eelde only had 47 passengers at the airport in April, May and June
The Coronavirus outbreak has caused the number of passenger flights to fall dramaticall, figures from Statistiek Nederlands show. The 47 passengers all flew in May, and there were no passenger flights in April and June. In 2019, 55,000 passengers boarded a plane at Eelde in the same three months. As reported by the GIC.
In 2019, Eelde processed 176,022 passengers. After the first six months of 2020, only 11,923. This decrease is largely caused by the Coronavirus outbreak, as the airport tends to subsist on cheap package holiday flights to Southern Europe. However, the figures show that the number of passengers using Eelde also fell sharply in January and February. In February, the British airline Flybe went bankrupt, putting an end to Eelde’s only connection with a major European city.
Passenger numbers are also decreasing nationally. In June, passenger numbers at all airports decreased by 93 percent from a year earlier. For example, only half a million passengers flew in June 2020, compared to 7.5 million passengers in June 2019. The number of flight movements also decreased by 68 percent.
Strangely enough, the number of flight movements at Groningen Airport Eelde is higher than ever. Especially the flying schools at the airport fly a lot. In June there were 4,087 flight movements. Last June, there were 2,739.
As the Coronavirus outbreak makes us all question the amount of flights that we take, and more and more people becoming aware of the ecological impact of short-haul flights, Eelde’s future looks more and more bleak.
Image via Groningen Airport Eelde
