With 223.2 million passengers, German air transport is the third largest generator of traffic, after Great Britain (more than 260 million passengers) and Spain (230 million). This puts Germany ahead of Italy (160 million passengers) and France (154.5 million passengers).
However, the growth in air traffic in Germany does not seem to be entirely to the satisfaction of the German Airports Association (ADV). In its newsletter, the association notes that for the fifth year running, German airports are experiencing lower growth than elsewhere in Europe. With a growth rate of 3.4%, it is still doing better than France, with an average growth of 3.1%, but not as well as Great Britain - where air traffic grew by 5.5% last year - or Spain, where passenger traffic jumped by 11% over the year.
ADV notes that the driving force behind German airport growth is once again European traffic, which continues to be stimulated by the low-cost offerings of foreign airlines. By contrast, intercontinental routes lost some of their appeal, with a decline of 0.2%. The number of intercontinental passengers totalled 39 million, representing a market share of 17.5%.
According to ADV, this fall in intercontinental traffic is an alarming sign of the relative weakening of Germany's economic power. Intercontinental traffic collapsed at Berlin-Tegel, following the abandonment of numerous routes by AirBerlin (-7.4%), Hamburg (-10.4%) and Stuttgart (-34%), but due to sluggish long-haul tourist traffic.
On the other hand, Cologne saw its intercontinental traffic jump by almost 100% with the launch of Eurowings long-haul flights. Lufthansa has equipped its subsidiary with 10 Airbus A330s serving 14 long-haul destinations. The airline plans to open new routes this summer to Las Vegas, Orlando, Seattle and Windhoek, while Norwegian Air has announced plans to launch long-haul routes from Hanover and Düsseldorf.
Germany's first hub, Frankfurtis losing market share. The German airport welcomed 60.79 million passengers compared with 61.03 million in 2015, down 0.4%. Intercontinental traffic was down by 0.2%.
On the other hand, Munich, Lufthansa's and Star Alliance's second hub in Germany, continues to grow. The Bavarian hub reported a 3.1% increase in total passenger numbers, with intercontinental traffic up 3.7%.
Among the major airports, Berlin Schönefeld and Cologne/Bonn posted the strongest increases, at 36.7% and 15.2% respectively. These performances are mainly due to the presence of low-cost airlines at the two hubs.
Düsseldorf and Hamburg airports, with their strong business traffic base, are doing well. Düsseldorf, Airberlin's hub, saw its traffic increase by 4.7% and Hamburg by 3.9%.
Out of 22 international airports, only 10 actually recorded an increase in traffic. Smaller airports continue to lose market share, a situation due to a tourist market partly depressed by security problems at popular holiday destinations (Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, for example) but also because of security and environmental taxes that increase operating costs for airlines. As a result, airlines prefer to concentrate their offer on the country's major hubs, taking advantage of economies of scale.
