Fin 1993, the airport - which was not yet called Roland-Garros - celebrated its millionth passenger for the first time. Twenty-seven years later, the Reunion platform is almost happy to see its annual traffic cross the one million passenger mark !
It was not taken for granted, a few weeks ago, when the obligation of compelling reasons to travel still affected the filling of planes between the metropolis and our island. At the end of November, 933 400 passagers seulement avaient été accueillis à Roland-Garros depuis le début de l’année, chiffre en recul de 58% par rapport à l’année précédente. Après avoir progressé en janvier et février 2020, traffic collapsed from March, when the Covid-19 pandemic led to border closures.
Activity partially recovered from July on the metropolitan-Réunion axis and on the Réunion-Mayotte line, while remaining very far from the level of previous years. After a further decline in November, linked to the second confinement, a marked increase in traffic was recorded during the second half of December in the metropolis and Mayotte. It allowed the airport to exceed the symbolic threshold of one million passengers. On other regional destinations, the traffic was totally non-existent for long, apart from a few repatriation flights.
In the fourth quarter, only a few commercial flights were operated by Air Mauritius to Mauritius and by Air Austral to Nosy Be. On international long-haul, finally, the traffic has totally disappeared from mid-March. After the suspension of service to Canton (China) at the beginning of the year, Air Austral lines to Chennai (Inde) and Bangkok were also interrupted, without any prospect of reopening at the start of 2021., l’activité a perdu seulement un quart de son tonnage en 2020 par rapport à l’année précédente, pour atteindre 21 500 tonnes. The collapse of bunker capacity on regular lines was partially offset by special flights, especially during confinement of the second trimester.
Air France, Air Austral, Corsair,French Bee et Air Mauritius, but also several European companies (KLM, Condor, TUI Belgium, Air Europa) were thus able to transport goods to the island. Furthermore, Air Austral carried out five exceptional rotations between Réunion and Paris in December in order not to penalize fruit exports (pineapple, lychees and passion fruit).
Bernard Grollier
