Munich Airport is back in the black. After three, sometimes heavy, annual losses as a result of the Corona crisis, the airport can show a profit again for 2023, as it announced on Thursday. At 25 million euros, however, it is still a long way from the pre-crisis level. In 2019, the airport made a profit of 178 million euros, then in 2020 it lost 321 million euros. In 2022 it was still 59 million euros.
The main driver of the recovery was the revival of air traffic. A good 37 million passengers last year correspond to an increase of 5.4 million. However, that was only 77 percent of the pre-crisis level. In the first quarter of 2024, the airport was a little further – at around 80 percent of the pre-crisis values. Compared to 2023, that was a growth of ten percent.
“Things continue to improve,” said airport boss Jost Lammers. He hopes to be able to maintain this growth throughout the year and to reach more than 40 million passengers again in 2024. Shops and restaurants at the airport have sales that are still well below pre-crisis levels. For shops it is around a quarter less, for restaurants and cafés it is around 14 percent less. The freight sector has already moved on: the volume here is now back to 90 percent of the old values.
The airport, which previously announced new records year after year, was also able to achieve a record in 2023. According to Lammers, the utilization of available seats was higher than ever at 81 percent. There are currently several large construction projects underway at the airport, as finance and infrastructure manager Nathalie Leroy said. This includes, among other things, the interior work of the 360-meter-long new pier at Terminal 1. In addition, ten parking garages are to be modernized in the coming years. There is a lot to do, especially in the area of infrastructure, after the difficult times of the pandemic.