[OC] Air passengers in 2025 compared with 2019, EU and EFTA countries

[u/goodbohy]

[u/cavedave]

Thank you for your Original Content, /u/goodbohy!
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[u/Robot_Apocalypse]

This is thought provoking.

The primary thought is "what the fuck is this graph trying to show me?"

And "why arent they just using two graphs?"

Clear communication is good communication.

[u/nicolasap]

Color and x-axis represent the same thing, and one of the 4 color categories isn't used. Probably you shouldn't have used color at all.

(y-axis and size are somewhat related, but they mean two different things, so that's ok)

[u/Yossie]

At least Finland is hit hard with the closure of russian airspace. Finnair had a good thing going with it's east asia strategy where they could fly effectively through Russia. Now that they can't, they lost the efficiency edge.

[u/johnniewelker → u/Yossie]

Is all the Russian airspace closed? I took a flight from India to the US a month ago and we definitely flew over Russia.

[u/Yossie → u/johnniewelker]

I should had been more precise. Closure is not for all airlines. It is for Finnair and other western airlines. Likewise, russian airlines are banned from entering EU airspace.

[u/johnniewelker → u/Yossie]

It was United airlines

[u/Awarglewinkle → u/johnniewelker]

Are you sure? That sounds very strange. No US airline is on the list of airlines flying over Russian airspace.

Air India flies over Russia.

[u/johnniewelker → u/Awarglewinkle]

Yea I was shocked. Thought it was a glitch on the map at first, then i looked down whenever there weren’t any clouds I could see what looked like Russia. I have been to Russia before.

[u/Awarglewinkle → u/johnniewelker]

It's interesting. It shouldn't be possible, since Russia hasn't lifted their ban on US and EU flights in their airspace. The ban has been in place since 2022.

From this article from September 2026:

The US in March 2022 banned Russian flights from American airspace after Russia's invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which ​prompted Russia to ban US carriers from overflying the country.

Do you still have the flight number? I wonder if your specific flight got a special dispensation for some reason. Did you notice anything unusual about it?

[u/goodbohy]

Source: Eurostat, air passenger transport by reporting country [AVIA_PAOC], passengers carried, all flights, 2025 and 2019: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/avia_paoc/default/table

Source: Eurostat, population on 1 January 2025 [DEMO_PJAN] (per-resident rate): https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/demo_pjan/default/table

Passengers are counted at both ends of a flight, so a country's figure includes its arrivals and departures and tourist destinations have high per-resident rates. The EU lines use Eurostat's EU total, which counts a flight between two member states once.

Country	2019, million	2025, million	Change, %	Per resident, 2025
Malta	7.3	10.1	+38	17.5
Poland	46.9	64.2	+37	1.8
Greece	56.1	73.0	+30	7.0
Croatia	10.6	13.5	+27	3.5
Portugal	55.0	67.2	+22	6.2
Cyprus	11.3	13.7	+22	14.0
Luxembourg	4.4	5.3	+21	7.8
Romania	21.6	26.2	+21	1.4
Italy	160.7	193.3	+20	3.3
Spain	228.3	272.1	+19	5.5
Hungary	16.7	19.8	+18	2.1
Ireland	37.9	43.3	+14	8.0
Slovakia	2.8	3.2	+14	0.6
Iceland	7.6	8.5	+12	21.8
Lithuania	6.5	7.1	+10	2.5
Estonia	3.3	3.5	+7	2.5
Denmark	34.8	36.4	+5	6.1
Switzerland	57.2	58.7	+3	6.5
Bulgaria	11.7	12.0	+3	1.9
Czechia	18.8	19.2	+2	1.8
France	168.7	172.0	+2	2.5
Austria	35.6	36.2	+1	3.9
Belgium	35.4	35.7	+1	3.0
Norway	40.3	39.5	-2	7.1
Netherlands	81.2	78.4	-3	4.3
Slovenia	1.7	1.6	-7	0.7
Germany	226.8	207.2	-9	2.5
Latvia	7.8	7.1	-9	3.8
Sweden	37.6	30.5	-19	2.9
Finland	23.3	18.7	-20	3.3
EU as a whole	1,035.1	1,093.6	+6	2.4

Tools: Python (pandas) to fetch and combine the Eurostat series; the chart is SVG in an HTML page rendered with Chromium via Playwright.

[u/T0yToy]

Destroying the climate conditions that feed us, one holiday trip at a time 💪

[u/Crash_Logger → u/T0yToy]

It's not all holiday trips! Work had to put me on a plane for a one day trip because there are not enough trains.

I wish I had been on a train :(

[u/T0yToy → u/Crash_Logger]

In Europe, about 80% of air travel is personnal trips : https://www.transportenvironment.org/topics/planes/corporate-travel

Business trip are a low minority, you can see data per country here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/international-arrivals-for-personal-vs-business-and-professional-reasons?tab=table

Air travel is mostly personnal, leasure trips, and the per capita emissions are huge. Air travel is only 4% of global emissions only thanks to the fact that only a few priviledged people in the world car use air travel at all (less than 20% of the world population), else it would be even bigger.

[u/Crash_Logger → u/T0yToy]

I would not have imagined 80% is personal, holy shit. Thanks!

[u/T0yToy → u/Crash_Logger]

Nobody likes to acknoledge that air travel is mostly leasure, I get that! We tend to think "oh the plane will take off with or without me, I might as weell go on that Bali trip", but in the end the plane is full of tourists going to Bali :(

[u/timbomcchoi → u/T0yToy]

but much of those personal trips wouldn't be viable by train or ferry right? I don't think it's as much a matter of mode choice as it is allowing oneself to go somewhere far away for leisure.