Fraport's 2022 Fiscal Year Marked by Strong Demand
Group result improves to €166.6 million – CEO Schulte expects continued traffic growth during summer by about 15 to 25 percent – Tighter climate targets for 2030: Fraport aims to cut carbon emissions by 78 percent compared to 1990 base-year
Dr. Stefan Schulte, Fraport's CEO, said: „We're moving in the right direction. In the past fiscal year, we've seen particularly strong demand for air travel from leisure passengers and vacationers. Our Group airports worldwide also benefited from this trend. While demand was still restrained at the start of the year, passenger numbers in Frankfurt saw rapid growth of up to 300 percent from April onwards. In mid-2022, traffic surges with three-digit growth rates, combined with staff shortages, occasionally brought us to our limits when ramping up operations. Hence, I wish to extend my sincere thanks to all our employees for their commitment and dedication, and to our partners at Frankfurt Airport for their continuous support, including – and first and foremost – Lufthansa. All of us have worked hard every day to keep disruptions for passengers to a minimum." For the full year 2022, accumulated passenger numbers at Frankfurt Airport (FRA) achieved nearly 100 percent growth compared to 2021. Looking ahead to the current year, Dr. Schulte stated: "During the summer we expect passenger traffic to further grow by about 15 to 25 percent compared to 2022. All process partners continue to be fully committed to ensuring that more resources are available for the upcoming travel season. Our primary goal is to maintain stable operations and enhance our resilience in responding to irregular situations. This remains a challenging task in view of the structural factors we are facing, such as the geopolitically-related airspace restrictions and the current constraints on the German labor market." Another key issue highlighted by Dr. Schulte is Fraport's ongoing decarbonization program: "We're further intensifying our climate measures. Having successfully progressed with decarbonization in 2022, we are now aiming to reduce CO2 emissions in Frankfurt to 50,000 metric tons by 2030. This corresponds to a reduction of 78 percent compared to the 1990 reference year. Our goal is to become carbon free across the Group by 2045."
Passenger growth boosts business performance
Dampened by the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus at the start of the year, traffic rebounded strongly from March onwards, as travel restrictions in many countries were lifted. In Frankfurt, passenger traffic jumped by up to 300 percent year-on-year in April and subsequent months. During 2022, some 48.9 million passengers traveled via Germany's largest aviation hub, an increase of 97.2 percent year-on-year (but still 30.7 percent down compared to pre-crisis 2019). The airports in Fraport's international portfolio also reported rising passenger numbers. Fraport's Group airports serving holiday destinations recovered even more quickly than the FRA hub with its more complex travel demand patterns. Ranking first were the Greek airports, serving nearly four percent more passengers in 2022 than in pre-pandemic 2019 and achieving a new all-time record.
