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Travelers at Cologne/Bonn Airport (July 8): Queues, some 100 meters long
Photo: Thomas Banneyer / dpa
Although Lufthansa and many other airlines have reduced their flight offerings, there is still chaos at German airports.
Around 40,000 flights are expected in Munich during the summer holidays, with up to 900 take-offs and landings a day.
Passengers obviously have to expect waiting times: the passengers should "plan a time buffer and be in the terminal about two and a half hours before departure," said the airport company FMG.
Air traffic at Germany's second-largest airport is suffering from a lack of staff, as is the case elsewhere, resulting in numerous complaints about delays, last-minute rebookings and left-over luggage.
Additional staff should therefore provide assistance and answer questions at the start of the holiday season.
Holiday start in three federal states challenges Frankfurt
Meanwhile, at the largest German airport in Frankfurt, employees are getting ready for the weekend.
That's when the school holidays begin in three federal states, and more passengers are expected than at any time since the beginning of the pandemic.
The summer holidays are starting in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, and around 200,000 passengers are expected every day over the weekend.
In Frankfurt, there is a lack of people in the ground handling services.
This has more far-reaching consequences than the staff shortages that also exist in the canteen kitchens, because aircraft have to be refueled, cleaned, and loaded and unloaded.
Staff is also scarce at check-in and on the planes themselves.
In addition, there are disruptions to the process from aircraft that have flown in delays elsewhere.
As a result, suitcases are often left lying around in Frankfurt while their owners have still caught the connecting flight.
A few days ago, there were already 5,000 suitcases in the halls that had to be forwarded.
Arriving passengers often have to wait hours for their luggage because outgoing luggage is given priority.
The shortage of staff is also noticeable in Cologne/Bonn: Travelers there report queues that are more than 100 meters long.
Crowds in the sky in some sectors
The massive number of passengers is also noticeable at Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS).
According to DFS, a rapid increase in flights and external influences have ensured that individual sectors of the airspace are already busier than before the outbreak of the pandemic.
The pent-up demand for holiday flights is causing problems, especially at weekends.
"These are traffic peaks that nobody expected," said DFS boss Arndt Schoenemann.
“The air traffic system is under a lot of pressure at the moment.
We at DFS are doing our part to ensure that the flight runs as punctually and smoothly as possible,” Schoenemann continued.
In addition to the high demand, several factors are affecting the airspace.
In particular, the airspace above 7.5 kilometers monitored by the Karlsruhe Center is heavily used for overflights because piloting capacities have fallen in several neighboring countries.
In the lower airspace, on the other hand, there is still significantly less traffic than in the years before Corona.
The airspace closures over Russia and Belarus are also forcing thousands of civil flights to take considerable detours and are also restricting the airspace in the east of the EU.
Airport Association does not expect improvement until October
According to the German Airport Association, the situation is not expected to ease for the time being.
"The current conditions do not meet our requirements," said managing director Ralph on Tuesday of the "world".
An improvement is not expected until October - also because there were not more applications for temporary work from Turkey.
jlk/sol/dpa
