Balance sheet 2023

Salzburg Airport catches up massively in terms of passengers

Last year, almost a third more passengers flew in and out of Salzburg Airport than in 2022.(Bild: Flughafen Salzburg)

The difficult times are over, but they are still leaving their mark. This is shown by Salzburg Airport's balance sheet for the previous year. The big unknown is the contamination of the groundwater by fire-fighting foam in earlier decades.

Salzburg Airport Managing Director Bettina Ganghofer can breathe a sigh of relief in view of the figures presented on Wednesday. The major corona dip with only 300,000 passengers should soon be overcome.

"We handled around 1.61 million passengers last year. This corresponds to an increase of 31.3 percent compared to the previous year," Ganghofer reported at a press conference at the airport. The airport is gradually returning to the pre-crisis level of 1.84 million passengers and is aiming for around 1.66 million for the current year.

"Research at the beginning"
The pandemic has also left its mark on staffing levels. Despite retirements, there were no new appointments due to the crisis at the time. This was felt in the company. "We have now filled almost all positions again," says the Managing Director.

In the previous year, with a consolidated net profit of around 3.4 million euros, a good six million euros went into investments. The big unknown for the future is the remediation of contaminated sites. The groundwater around the airport was contaminated by PFAS extinguishing foam during fire-fighting exercises. Bettina Ganghofer says of the scope of remediation: "Research is still in its infancy here."