After Corona, air traffic from Germany is growing more slowly than in other European markets. This has consequences for the offer and therefore for passengers.
Fewer destinations can be reached from German airports with so-called low-cost airlines than in the previous year. According to regular evaluations by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), 466 routes were served by airlines that meet the criteria of a low-cost company in a selected week in January. A year earlier, 485 destinations were served.
Important characteristics of low-cost airlines in the sense of the DLR study are low ticket prices and their general availability on the Internet. In the week under review, the 13 companies offered 2,100 departures to destinations in 40 countries. Frequencies were increased, particularly to Spain, so that the total offer increased by 3 percent despite the lower number of routes. Domestic German routes fell by 5 percent.
While Ryanair is by far the largest provider in Europe, in Germany the Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings has the edge over the Irish. Most low-cost offers in Germany can be found at Berlin Airport, followed by Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Cologne airports. Smaller airports such as Dortmund, Weeze and Memmingen have been able to significantly expand their offerings and are playing a larger role again.
DLR: Price comparison with previous years does not make sense
Ryanair has significantly increased its offerings even in the weak travel month of January. According to DLR counts, the planes took off in Europe almost 15,000 times in the week under review. That is around 15 percent more than in the same period in 2019 before the outbreak of the Corona crisis, which had brought air traffic to a virtual standstill.
For flights from Germany, the Irish also offered the cheapest average price for a one-way ticket without checked baggage at 66.01 euros. This was followed by Easyjet with 83.86 euros and Wizz Air with 94.48 euros per flight. Eurowings was the most expensive provider with an average of 109.65 euros.
For the study, a large number of connections with four different advance booking periods between one day and three months were evaluated. Tickets booked at short notice are usually the most expensive. A price comparison with previous years is not useful because the German air traffic tax was increased during the period under review, the DLR said.
Source: Stern
