Air traffic between France and Germany remains high a major axis of the European Union with 3.51 million passengers carried in 2015. The number of passengers departing from Germany at the 25 main commercial airports reached 108.2 million in 2015, an increase of more than 10% compared with the previous year. increase of 3.7% compared with 2014. German statistics actually separate origin and provenance by airline, which means that all these figures have to be multiplied by two to get the actual total on a given route. So the total number of passengers in 2015 to and from Germany was 216.41 million.
International traffic continues to grow faster than domestic traffic. It rose by 4.31TP3Q to total 85.12 million passengers in 2015 (170.78 million departures and arrivals). International traffic accounts for 79.7% of total traffic at German airports..
France ranks 6th out of Germany with 3.51 million passengers (7.13 million departures and arrivals), representing a market share of 4.2%. The Germany-France route is boosted by the rise of low-cost airlines and a consequent fall in the average tariff.
Low cost is particularly beneficial on the Berlin-France route, but also on certain regional routes such as Germany/Nice and Germany/Toulouse. Some 705,000 passengers travel from Berlin to France. The German capital is now the third largest Germany-France market after Frankfurt (990,000 departing passengers in 2015) and Munich (894,000 passengers), and ahead of Düsseldorf (325,000 passengers).
From Germany, the leading French destination is unsurprisingly Paris. The Germany-Roissy CDG routes - where Air France, Lufthansa/Germanwings and Airberlin flights are grouped together - generated 1.977 million passengers in 2015. Orly welcomed 278,000 passengers, followed by Nice and Lyon. Twelve French cities were linked to Germany in 2015, but routes to Paris (CDG and Orly) accounted for 64.2% of all passenger traffic.
An interesting statistic shows which cities in France are actually the final destinations for passengers departing from Germany. In 2015, passengers departing from Germany actually travelled to 15 final destination cities, including Brest, Clermont-Ferrand and Rennes. While Paris-CDG actually generated 1.45 million passengers in point-to-point traffic - or 73.5% of the route's total traffic - the number of point-to-point passengers far exceeds the route's actual figure on some destinations. The number of passengers to Bordeaux was 573% higher than the route's traffic; to Nantes, passenger traffic was 78% higher and to Montpellier 40% higher. The rise of airlines on German routes to Bordeaux, Nantes and Toulouse, in particular, suggests that the year will be a particularly busy one for the Group. 2016 should see an acceleration in growth in Germany-France.
