Vienna Airport Loses 7.5% of Its September Passengers as Malta and Košice Hold the Group Near Flat

Within the Vienna total, the two main passenger groups both fell. Local passengers, meaning those who begin or end their journey in Vienna, declined 7.9% to 2,238,344. Transfer passengers, who change planes at the hub, fell 5.4% to 660,224. Flight movements, counting take-offs and landings, dropped 6.6% to 21,008.

Aviation.Direct reported that the average load factor slipped 0.3 percentage points to 82.4%. Cargo was the exception at the home airport. Freight rose 9.5% to 28,180 tonnes, according to both outlets.

Regional pattern: the Middle East takes the sharpest hit

The regional breakdown shows where the loss was concentrated. Traffic to and from the Near and Middle East was 57,430 passengers, 28.0% lower than a year earlier. Eastern Europe fell 16.0% to 213,239 passengers, and Western Europe, by far the largest market, fell 8.3% to 1,207,510. The Far East was the one region reported with growth, rising 6.5% to 58,272 passengers.

The size of the regional figures matters for interpreting the decline. Western Europe accounts for the bulk of the traffic, so an 8.3% fall there weighs far more on the total than the steeper percentage fall to the Middle East, which is a much smaller market in absolute terms. The airport did not publish a breakdown of how much of the overall decline each region explains, so that split is not available from the sources read.

Malta and Košice carry the group

The group-level result was cushioned by the two airports Flughafen Wien holds abroad. Malta Airport recorded 1,109,789 passengers in September, up 12.0%. Košice Airport in eastern Slovakia handled 118,079 passengers, up 32.2%.

Over the first nine months of 2026 the pattern is the same. The group has carried 33,111,562 passengers, a gain of 0.7%, while the Vienna location alone stands at 23,478,801 passengers, down 4.5%. Aviation.Direct reported that Malta is up 14.5% for the nine months and Košice up 32.1%.

In other words, the group is slightly ahead of last year only because the foreign airports are growing fast enough to offset the shortfall at home. September widened the gap: the group fell 2.0% in the month, whereas it was still growing in the earlier part of the year.

Where the year was heading before September

Flughafen Wien's half-year results, published on 19 August 2026, give the context for the monthly figures. In the first six months the group carried 19,975,392 passengers, up 1.9%. Vienna itself handled 14,267,744, down 3.2%, while Malta rose 15.6% to 5,247,403 and Košice rose 43.5% to 460,245. For July, Vienna fell 4.7% to 3,128,176 passengers, and the group edged up 0.4% to 4,470,740.

September's 7.5% decline at Vienna is the steepest of the monthly figures quoted in the company's half-year release and the September report. August figures were not available in the sources read in full.

On the financial side, the company said first-half revenue rose 0.9% to EUR 529.3 million, while EBITDA increased 7.3% to EUR 227.1 million, helped by cost discipline and one-off effects. Net profit before minorities was EUR 123.2 million, up 7.0%. The company slightly raised its 2026 outlook in August. It now expects about 42.5 million passengers for the group and about 30.5 million at Vienna, which it still described as a noticeable decline. It also guided to revenue of about EUR 1,080 million, EBITDA of about EUR 425 million, and a net result before minorities of about EUR 220 million.

That guidance carries a stated condition: it assumes no further geopolitical impacts or major traffic restrictions. The September result, with its explicit reference to cancelled connections linked to the Middle East, is a data point the company will need to weigh against that assumption. The sources read for this article do not say whether the company has changed its forecast since the monthly figures were released.

Ryanair's announced winter cuts

Aviation.Direct reported that Ryanair had announced, only days before the traffic figures were released, that it would withdraw four based aircraft from Vienna and end ten routes from the airport in the 2026/27 winter schedule. The airline cited the Austrian air traffic tax and higher fees as the reasons. The trade outlet did not give the tax amount or any rate change. Another trade source indexed in search results gave a different route count for the same announcement, and the airline's own statement was not read, so the figure of ten routes rests on the Aviation.Direct report alone.

The cut follows a sequence of earlier ones. In October 2025, according to an APA report on Vienna.at, Ryanair said it would remove two more aircraft from Vienna for summer 2026, on top of three already withdrawn for winter 2025/26 and three discontinued routes. The airline put the tax at EUR 12 per passenger and described it as among the highest in Europe, noting that Sweden, Hungary and Slovakia have no comparable levy. Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary was quoted as saying that otherwise "further cuts and higher fares" would threaten Austrian passengers and visitors. The report said Ryanair had given the Austrian chancellor a growth plan in September 2025 and that, according to the airline, the government did not respond.

That same report listed other base closures at Vienna: Wizz, Level and easyJet had closed their bases there. A separate January 2026 trend.at report on the airport's forecast described Wizz Air as having left Vienna entirely, and named Ryanair's withdrawals and Austrian Airlines' shrinking fleet as further reasons the board expected only around 30 million passengers in 2026, after a record 32.6 million in 2025.

The airport's position on the tax

Vienna Airport has consistently argued that the state flight levy is the lever that matters. After Ryanair's October 2025 announcement, the airport said abolishing or sharply reducing the tax was necessary and called it an additional cost burden that is high by international standards. It pointed out that the fees it controls were, despite inflation, roughly at 2015 levels on average, and said it would cut those fees by up to 4.6% from 1 January 2026, equally for all airlines. The same report said Austrian Airlines' chief executive had also called for the tax to be scrapped.

In the August half-year release, board member Julian Jäger said the priority was abolishing the flight levy or at least reducing it significantly. Chief executive Günther Ofner said that Austria as an aviation location was falling behind in international comparison. Vienna.at's September coverage also linked to a related story in which the airport again calls for an end to the EUR 12 tax; the details of that item were not read for this article.

What to watch next

The next scheduled data point is the October traffic release, which will be the first monthly figure to cover the period in which the winter schedule takes effect. Winter schedules in Europe generally begin on the last weekend of October. The sources read do not say how many seats the Ryanair reduction removes, so the size of its effect on Vienna's monthly totals cannot yet be stated.

For now, the reported position is clear. Vienna lost 7.5% of its September passengers, the Middle East and Eastern Europe fell by far larger percentages than the Western European core, cargo grew 9.5%, and the group total was held to a 2.0% fall by Malta and Košice. The airport's own guidance for the year, issued in August, assumed no further geopolitical shocks, and the company continues to press the Austrian government to remove or cut the per-passenger flight tax.

Sources

• Vienna.at (APA), "Vienna Airport: Significantly Fewer Passengers - These Are the Reasons", 13 October 2026
• Aviation.Direct, report on Flughafen Wien September 2026 traffic, 13 October 2026
• Flughafen Wien AG half-year 2026 results release (EQS News), 19 August 2026
• Vienna.at (APA), "Ryanair zieht zwei weitere Flugzeuge aus Wien ab", 28 October 2025
• trend.at, "Flughafen Wien erwartet 2026 Passagierrueckgang", January 2026