Global Airport News
Deutsche Lufthansa's cargo business could lose tens of millions of euros a year if a German court rules in favour of a night flight ban at Frankfurt airport, a Cargo management board member told Reuters.
"It would be a mentionable figure, at least a high double-digit million euro sum," Karl-Heinz Koepfle said during a recess at the German higher administrative court, saying that figure consisted both of additional costs and lost revenue.
The court's goal is to rule whether a limitation of night flights out of Frankfurt or an outright ban is legal, weighing the interests of airlines and cargo shippers against those of residents living near the airport. Frankfurt airport, operated by Germany's Fraport, handled almost 53.5 million passengers last year as well as more than 2 million metric tonnes of air freight.
The German state of Hesse approved in 2007 plans to expand the airport, but one condition was that flight movements were limited to an average of 17 per night between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. local time to keep noise pollution to a minimum.
Lufthansa said on Tuesday it alone would require an average of 23 flights per night by 2020 for passenger transportation and cargo flights. Requirements by tour operators such as Condor, owned by Thomas Cook, would come on top of that.
"The worst alternative would be if it was decided here to issue a new planning approval notice with no night flights. But that is not our expectation," Koepfle said.
Looking ahead, Koepfle said cargo volume declines may have reached their fastest rate in April. But he said that nobody can say at this point when trade volumes, weighed down by the global economic crisis, would start to pick up again.
