By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA

Air passenger traffic in Europe grew 5 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2018, an airport authority said on Wednesday.

"Passenger traffic growth in the EU market stood at 4.6 percent in the third quarter, remaining consistently stable over the 3-months period," Airports Council International (ACI) Europe said in a statement.

Airports in Finland, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Malta and Luxembourg posted double-digit growth while airports in Sweden, the U.K. and the Netherlands registered the weakest results.

Passenger traffic in the non-EU market rose 6.5 percent on a yearly basis from July to September. This was mainly stemmed from deceleration in Turkish airports, ACI Europe said.

ACI Europe also revealed that freight traffic rose 1.4 percent year-on-year between July and September.

Olivier Jankovec, director general of the council, said the momentum in traffic growth was robust in the peak summer months, but diminished.

Jankovec cited airport capacity issues, industrial unrest, rising oil prices and airline consolidation as limits to the gains.

"Aviation taxes and economic slowdowns have also come to take their toll as evidenced by stalling air traffic growth in Sweden and Turkey," he said.

The ACI Europe airport traffic report includes 500 airports in 45 European countries, representing more than 90 percent of European air passenger traffic.