As of: February 7, 2024, 4:30 p.m
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Planes take off from Frankfurt Airport: Germany's connection to international air traffic continues to decline in comparison.
© Boris Roessler / dpa
Germany's air transport connections continue to decline compared to other European countries.
The reasons are the high government costs in this country and the increasing competition on the ground.
Frankfurt - According to fears from the aviation industry, Germany is increasingly dependent on flight connections to European countries due to high government costs.
“Air transport connections in Germany have become worse compared to the rest of Europe since the pandemic, the trend seems to have become more established,” said the President of the Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry (BDL), Jost Lammers, on Wednesday.
The main reason is the location costs, which have risen sharply since 2020 due to air traffic taxes, air traffic control and aviation security fees.
They are five to ten times higher than at airports in other European countries.
According to the BDL, when air traffic recovers from the corona pandemic, the gap between Germany and the rest of Europe will not shrink in the summer.
From April to October, the planned seating capacity will increase by seven percentage points to 89 percent of the level from 2019, the year before the outbreak of the pandemic.
In the rest of Europe, air traffic is expected to grow to 104 percent.
In 2023 as a whole, German airports counted 197 million passengers, 20 percent more than in the previous year.
At 79 percent of the pre-crisis level, the airlines' offerings remained 17 percentage points behind the capacities in Europe.
When it comes to direct flights in Europe, Germany only achieved 68 percent, while air traffic in holiday destinations in southern Europe exceeded 2019 by more than 20 percent in some cases.
Less offer
The costs primarily dampen supply rather than demand, explained BDL managing director Matthias von Randow.
Airlines thinned out their offerings in order to make better use of their aircraft.
As a result, travelers are often forced to switch to departure points in neighboring countries.
The low-cost airline Ryanair, Europe's largest airline in terms of passenger numbers, avoids German airports because of location costs.
“We only invest in regional airports that offer us competitive costs,” said airline boss Michael O'Leary in a recent interview with Reuters.
Air traffic within Germany is the furthest below pre-crisis levels.
Without feeder flights to the long-haul flights at the Frankfurt and Munich hubs, there are only 25 percent of the flights in 2019. This is a problem for the smaller airports, but less so from the perspective of travelers.
Since the pandemic, many companies in Germany have been relying on virtual meetings with customers and business partners instead of flying.
Aviation and Deutsche Bahn are also consciously working on a shift to rail.
(Reuters, lf)