Expensive flying: High costs – aviation industry threatens flight cancellations

The aviation industry believes that the air traffic tax, which was raised in May, will lead to flight cancellations at German airports. “The excessive location costs will cost us 4 million seats in the coming winter flight schedule,” said Joachim Lang, CEO of the German Aviation Association (BDL), to the daily newspaper “Welt”. In addition to the tax increase, he cited the fees for security checks and air traffic control, which have recently doubled in Germany, as a cost factor. In other countries, these are significantly lower. “This means that airlines are starting to calculate whether it still makes business sense to fly to Germany.”

Most recently, Irish budget airline Ryanair called on the federal government to withdraw the increased air traffic tax. Otherwise, the airline will reduce its offer from German airports by a further ten percent or 1.5 million seats next summer and relocate to countries with a cheaper cost base. Europe’s busiest airline also demanded reduced fees for air traffic control and a waiver of the already agreed fee increase for air security checks for passengers at airports. Lang defended Ryanair’s move. “That doesn’t sound like blackmail to me, but rather consistent. We should be grateful to him (Ryanair boss Eddie Wilson) for speaking plainly.”

Lang has been the new BDL managing director since the beginning of July. He demanded that the federal government use the revenue from the increased air traffic tax to promote alternative aviation fuels, as originally planned in the coalition agreement. The sum of two billion euros is enough “to decarbonize an entire sector,” said Lang. “The federal government would only have to spend two billion, which it will also get from us.” The traffic light government had raised the ticket tax because of the budget crisis. This affects all passenger flights that take off from German airports.