Frankfurt Airport (FRA) served some 4.6 million passengers in March 2025. Passenger traffic during the month was impacted by a full-day strike on March 10, which led to an almost complete halt in flight operations and disrupted the travel plans of about 140,000 passengers. The reference month of March 2024 was also impacted by strikes, affecting as many as 300,000 passengers. However, the effect in March 2024 was mitigated by the earlier timing of the Easter holidays compared with this year. Overall, passenger traffic in March 2025 increased slightly by 0.3 percent compared to the same month last year.
During the first quarter of 2025, passenger traffic in Frankfurt also remained nearly unchanged compared with the same period last year. In the first three months of 2025, a total of roughly 12.4 million passengers travelled via FRA, representing a slight 0.9 percent decrease year-on-year.
Fraport CEO Dr. Stefan Schulte said: “Passenger traffic in Frankfurt has stagnated in the first quarter of the year. This was primarily due to the currently extremely high regulatory costs in Germany, which are hampering our competitiveness in the global market. The new German government is setting the right course by reducing the air traffic tax and eliminating the national blending quota for synthetic aviation fuels that are not yet available on the market. These measures can help to unlock dynamic growth in aviation again over the medium term. For the upcoming summer season, seat capacity at Germany’s largest aviation gateway in Frankfurt is expected to increase by five percent.”
FRA’s cargo throughput (comprising airfreight and airmail) rose by 3.2 percent year-on-year to 184,679 metric tons in March 2025. Aircraft movements climbed by 3.9 percent year-on-year to 35,280 takeoffs and landings. Likewise, accumulated maximum takeoff weights (or MTOWs) increased by 4.2 percent to around 2.2 million metric tons.
The airports in Fraport’s international portfolio presented mixed results in March 2025. Slovenia’s Ljubljana Airport (LJU) served 94,532 passengers in the reporting month, representing a drop of 2.0 percent year-on-year. In South America, the two Brazilian airports of Fortaleza (FOR) and Porto Alegre (POA) saw combined traffic slide by 3.2 percent to 986,389 passengers. In contrast, traffic at Peru’s Lima Airport (LIM) surged by 9.4 percent to roughly 2.1 million passengers. A total of 831,501 passengers used Fraport’s 14 Greek regional airports in March 2025, up 1.3 percent. On the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, traffic at the Twin Star airports of Burgas (BOJ) and Varna (VAR) advanced by 4.4 percent to a total of 76,709 passengers. At Antalya Airport (AYT) on the Turkish Riviera, traffic decreased by 16.6 percent year-on-year to 1.1 million passengers. The early timing of the Easter travel season in 2024 provided an additional boost to traffic in March last year.
The total number of passengers at all airports actively managed by the Fraport Group slipped by 0.4 percent year-on-year to around 9.8 million in March 2025.
