Lűbeck airport facing challenging times; new Ryanair service to Hahn starts in October

Ryanair will start a domestic route from Lübeck to Frankfurt Hahn on 26 October.

Lűbeck Airport (LBC) near Hamburg is going through a difficult period. This week its CEO resigned, the second such resignation in the last two years. The airport is owned by New Zealand based Infratil, which has now put a kiwi in charge of business. After seeing passenger numbers more than treble between 2001 and 2005 the last two years have seen a downturn in traffic as the airport’s primary airline Ryanair has reduced frequencies and axed routes.

Source: Lűbeck Airport

Traffic in the first four months of 2008 is down a further 23% though there is some good news. Jet2.com began a four times weekly service from Leeds/Bradford on 1 May, though this appears to be only a seasonal route. More significant is the decision by Ryanair to start a domestic route to Frankfurt Hahn on 26 October which will operate daily.

Hamburg (Lübeck) was one of eight new destinations launched by Jet2.com from Leeds/Bradford in May.

Ryanair network constantly changing

Compared to last summer Ryanair has reduced frequency on two routes (London Stansted from 19 to 12 weekly flights and Dublin from seven to three) while dropping the Marseille route completely. However, frequencies to Pisa have increased and a new service to Barcelona Girona began last October. Glasgow Prestwick and Shannon are other destinations that Ryanair started serving in 2005 but has since ditched.

Nearly one-third of all passengers at LBC were flying to and from London Stansted in 2007. With nearly 226,000 passengers the route was the airport’s busiest by some distance followed by Stockholm Skavsta (95,000), Pisa (69,000) and Milan Bergamo (57,000). Services to Dublin were dropped over the winter but have re-started this summer.

Italian routes have highest load factors

A detailed analysis shows that Ryanair’s Italian routes to Milan Bergamo and Pisa had the highest load factor across the year. Milan Bergamo averaged 75.2% and Pisa 73.5% followed by Stockholm Skavsta with 71.2%.

Source: Derived from Destatis data

Across Ryanair’s entire LBC route network an average flown load factor of 69% was achieved last year. In 2005, when the airline carried 23% more passengers through the airport the average load factor was an estimated 74.3%.