95 served routes in Europe have average 27,000 indirect passengers
431 routes within Europe have 20,000+ indirect passengers. This article looks at 95 served routes with 50%+ passengers connecting. One of the top-20 is Munich – Tallinn. This was served by Nordica until March 2019, including, at one point, with a twice-daily schedule. After a few months of no service, Lufthansa then began Munich – Tallinn November.
In the last 12 months, 431 routes within Europe had 20,000+ indirect passengers. With a median of 25,000 per route, one-third of passengers connected en route. In all, over 12 million passengers were carried.
95 served routes see 50%+ of passengers connecting
95 of these 431 routes had a high 50%+ of passengers connecting. Combined, these 95 served routes had almost three million passengers and a median of 27,000 per route. 20 of these 95 had 30,000+ indirect passengers (median: 38,600). Of these 20, nine had 40,000+ (median: 47,000). These 20 are shown in the table below. Note: passengers are both ways combined.
It’s immediately obvious how much Scandinavia appears, including domestic Norway and domestic Sweden. Of course, Sweden’s environmental movement – flygskam, flight shame – might well put paid to these, even assuming the financial side appeared sufficiently attractive to warrant new entry and more nonstops. Gothenburg features eight times in the table. Indeed, to all of Europe, nearly two million people connect from Gothenburg.
| City-pair level | Indirect passengers | Direct/non-stop passengers | Total passengers | % indirect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gothenburg – Umeå | 82,523 | 10,181 | 92,704 | 89 |
| Gothenburg – Luleå | 68,308 | 31,966 | 100,274 | 68 |
| Gothenburg – Milan | 55,393 | 25,541 | 80,934 | 68 |
| Stockholm – Stavanger | 46,829 | 12,579 | 59,408 | 79 |
| Gothenburg – Rome | 46,565 | 31,043 | 77,608 | 60 |
| Kiev – Lisbon | 46,378 | 38,723 | 85,101 | 54 |
| Gothenburg – Manchester | 44,354 | 21,093 | 65,447 | 68 |
| Gothenburg – Sundsvall-Timrå | 40,999 | 21,749 | 62,748 | 65 |
| Copenhagen – Trondheim | 40,062 | 37,890 | 77,952 | 51 |
| Lisbon – Palma | 39,275 | 23,208 | 62,483 | 63 |
| Brussels – Yerevan | 37,876 | 11,448 | 49,324 | 77 |
| Gothenburg – Lyon | 37,285 | 8,465 | 45,750 | 81 |
| Gothenburg – Åre Östersund | 35,801 | 2,950 | 38,751 | 92 |
| Mo i Rana – Oslo | 34,917 | 5,560 | 40,477 | 86 |
| Ibiza – Menorca | 34,441 | 3,616 | 38,057 | 96 |
| Palma – Tenerife | 34,332 | 12,531 | 46,863 | 73 |
| Bergen – Harstad-Narvik | 33,707 | 5,096 | 38,803 | 87 |
| Amsterdam – Tbilisi | 33,271 | 9,591 | 42,862 | 78 |
| Munich – Tallinn | 31,146 | 12,157 | 43,303 | 72 |
| Porto – Vienna | 30,115 | 10,385 | 40,500 | 74 |
| Median | 38,576 | 12,344 | 54,366 | 74 |
| Source: OAG Traffic Analyser using MIDT data. | ||||
A number of these 20 routes are seasonal, including winter-seasonal, such as Gothenburg – Umeå with SAS and Gothenburg – Sundsvall-Timrå with BRA. Some, such as Gothenburg – Milan, are summer-seasonal. Ryanair operates Gothenburg – Bergamo twice-weekly.
Porto – Vienna: from zero to two airlines by the end of 2019
Of course, indirect passengers are just one measurement of unmet demand and potential opportunities. Yet it can be very helpful. Porto – Vienna now has Lauda (Level has ended it), with Wizz Air coming on the 17th December. It will be interesting to see how much this market grows and the degree to which indirect passengers fall.
Ryanair began Gothenburg – Manchester in April 2019 on a twice-weekly basis, so the full impact of this has not yet been seen. Munich – Tallinn was served by Nordica until March 2019. Lufthansa then began it in November.
Of these 431 routes, 80 are unserved with 2.4 million pre-stimulation
Next time, we will look at the 80 unserved routes with over 20,000. These have a median of 25,000 passengers, with 27 having 30,000+. Pre-stimulation, these 80 have two 2.4 million indirect. The number-one is a sub-800-mile route from Germany, with 75,000 indirect.
Great work. Can you try to analyze BTS airport? Its only unserved european capital city airport by regular airlines. The airport is with high potential, but no airline is interested cos is managed by incompetent government management. People from 6th richest european region have to travel from VIE, BUD, PRG.
Hi Marek. Thanks for your nice comment. I’ll have a look at BTS. A problem with data for BTS will be that a lot of passengers will be leaked to/from VIE.
Thank you. Yes, you are right, lot of pax will be leaked to/from VIE. We are sad in Slovakia no airlines want to suport our aviation jobs and dont want to give us opportunity to travel from home. For pax from whole country is not easy to access VIE/BUD/KRK airports. I believe airline which will offer good connection to HUB from BTS can win a jackpot. In our company we pay any time 600 eur for return flight to BRU or at least 400 eur to other EU destinations. We can choose from many different airlines from VIE. If we will have even one well connected airline from BTS we will use this airline. I just wanted to say that airlines are not very smart to ignore such a city instead of it they fight in VIE.