Enlarge image
Air travelers wait for a corona test at Frankfurt Airport
Photo: Ralph Peters / imago images / Ralph Peters
Things are looking up again at German airports.
The demand for flights has recently increased significantly, as figures from the Airport Association ADV show.
Last week, for the first time, the number of passengers was almost 20 percent of the number of travelers in 2019.
The growth compared to 2020 was 433 percent - that sounds huge.
While German airports only had around 201,000 passengers in calendar week 22 last year, there were 1.07 million passengers last week.
But in the same week of 2019, the airports still recorded almost 5.4 million passengers.
The ADV still speaks of a »recovery path«.
“With the gradual return to social life, the demand for air transport is growing.
The dynamic development in the number of bookings indicates that summer travel will be higher than in the previous year, «said Ralph Beisel, General Manager of the association.
High prices and little space on board
For travelers, however, everything is still not the way they were used to before the crisis.
In some places there are larger queues in front of the security checkpoints because not all control lanes are open.
Lounges usually only offer a modest range of snacks and drinks, which at some airports may only be consumed outside the premises due to national regulations.
Aircraft, on the other hand, still park on the apron.
The transfer takes place with buses, which are sometimes crowded.
Airlines sometimes rely on smaller aircraft in order to be maximally profitable - for passengers this also means more confined space on board.
And because there are still fewer flights on many routes than before, the prices are often higher.
German airports have been drastically affected by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic since March 2020. The lowest number of travelers was reached in the 15th calendar week of 2020. The number of passengers across Germany collapsed to around 55,000. For comparison: in 2019 there were still more than 4.8 million air travelers in the same week. The airports responded by closing entire terminals.
However, one area in aviation was booming in comparison: air freight. If the cargo volume was not as badly affected by slumps last year as the number of passengers, it is now growing and growing. More than 100,000 tons of freight were handled last week, almost 27 percent more than in the previous year. ADV boss Beisel sees no signs that this trend will soon reverse. »The global economy, which is picking up again, and trade are triggering a high demand for transport. Air freight logistics benefits from this, ”he says.
