The aggregate sums the EU countries that report in every quarter, and its income slope depends on which countries are summed. Only one of the two tests for a long-run link finds one, so the slope is a description.
What this shows: The chart covers 2002 Q1 to 2025 Q4 and plots Passengers (millions) and Real GDP (€bn, chain-linked 2015 prices). Latest values: Passengers (millions) 272.9; Real GDP (€bn, chain-linked 2015 prices) 2,979.
Conditions and method
Status: descriptive (the tests for a long-run link disagree and the fit is weak, so read the slope as a trend ratio and not as a settled long-run elasticity).
One of the two tests for a long-run link between the aggregate’s passengers and GDP finds one and the other does not, and income explains too little of the variation for a clean fit, so the fit is classed as weak.
The aggregate sums the 14 countries that report in every quarter of the estimation window: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia. Passengers are sums of national totals, so a flight between two of the summed countries is counted at both ends.
The slope depends on which countries are summed: it ranges from 2.82 to 4.34 as any one country is left out. Eurostat’s own series for the EU aggregate of 27 members from 2020, which counts an intra-EU trip once, gives a slope of 3.01 on 2008 to 2019, also descriptive.