With 6.54 million passengers in 2021, Nice Airport experienced a 45% increase in traffic compared to 2020, which was undoubtedly difficult to do worse.
Traffic was “higher than expected” for this year 2021, which was still heavily impacted by the sanitary crisis. While the first half of the year was more challenging, representing only 23% of the same period’s figures in 2019, the second half proved more positive, representing 63% of the traffic for the second half of 2019.
Although the traffic at France’s second largest airport in 2021 remained well below the numbers of 2019, when 14.5 million passengers were recorded, the figures are much better than in 2020, when only 4.5 million travelers passed through Nice Airport.
Between January 1st and June 1st, 2021, only 1 million passengers passed through Nice Airport, during the third wave of Covid. It was only in the second half of the year that traffic picked up.
Closed for sixteen months, Terminal 1 reopened at the beginning of summer only to close again at the start of the winter season. In total: 6.54 million passengers and 100,000 planes went through Nice Airport in 2021.
While domestic traffic recovered almost 70% of its passengers compared to 2019 figures, international flights only reached 25%, with 2.5 million passengers, figures that are obviously explained by the measures in place and border closures due to the sanitary crisis.
The reopening of Terminal 1 scheduled for April 2022 raises hopes for a greater recovery in traffic.
