The European Union counted 605,806 commercial flights in total in September 2023, a notable 7.9% rise over the number of flights in the same month the year before.

This amount was 8.9% lower than the number of flights for the same month in 2019, according to EU Helpers.

The EU agency for statistics, Eurostat, reports that from June to August 2023, a steady trend of increasing commercial flights was seen, with all three months exhibiting appreciable growth compared to the corresponding months in 2022.

In comparison to the same months in the previous year, June showed a growth of 6.9%, July a rise of 7.4%, and August a rise of 6.6%.

The most recent data from Eurostat showed that commercial flights are still recovering from the pandemic and have not yet reached their pre-pandemic (2019) levels, with June (-10.4%), July (-9.0%), and August (-8.5%) still showing a shortfall. This is true even though there has been a significant increase in the number of flights.

According to Eurostat, Greece is in first place with a growth of 10.9%, followed by Portugal with a 9.0% increase, Cyprus with a 5.9% increase, Croatia with a 2.6% increase, Ireland with a 1.4% increase, and Malta with a 0.7% increase.

In contrast to those nations who have surpassed or are on track to reach their 2019 flight levels, a number of other countries, such as Latvia, Finland, Estonia, Sweden, and Slovenia, are still a long way from doing so.

In fact, they have seen considerable drops in air activity, with Latvia seeing a notable dip of 30.4%, Finland a drop of 30.2%, Estonia a drop of 25.4%, Sweden a drop of 24.1%, and Slovenia a decline of 22.9%.

It's not a brand-new issue that commercial flights are still struggling to return to their pre-pandemic levels. Similar worries have previously been expressed by Eurostat, and the aviation sector has been battling this problem for a while. The sector is still facing a large and persistent difficulty in trying to maintain the same number of flights as in 2019.