German airports report traffic drop in August; Weeze’s traffic doubles thanks to Ryanair

Airport Weeze recently celebrated handling one million passengers in a year for the first time. The millionth passenger was Heleen M. Koppens, who arrived on a Ryanair flight from Alicante.

Passenger numbers at Germany’s leading airports, which had been growing year-on-year by 5% as recently as May, fell by 1.1% in August. This follows marginal growth of just 0.5% in July.

Source: ADV

Among Germany’s top 10 airports only Stuttgart is currently reporting a year-to-date decline in passenger numbers (of 2.1%), though in August six of the top 10 airports reported a fall in traffic compared with 2007 including Lufthansa’s home base in Frankfurt where traffic fell by 3.9%. Berlin Schönefeld (+8.1%), Berlin Tegel (3.8%), Cologne/Bonn (+2.9%) and Dűsseldorf (+0.1%) were the only major airports still reporting growth in August.

Source: ADV

Looking at Germany’s top 20 airports for the first eight months of 2008, reveals that five airports have experienced a downturn in demand. Growth has been highest at Weeze (Ryanair’s latest German base which is around 50 kilometres from Dűsseldorf) but other airports such as Dortmund, Bremen and Karlsruhe/Baden have all reported passenger numbers up around 20%. Germany’s biggest airport, Frankfurt Main, has seen traffic grow by less than 1% while its low-cost ‘partner’ Frankfurt Hahn, used almost exclusively by Ryanair, saw traffic fall just over 3%.