In the fight against the handling chaos, Frankfurt Airport wants to reduce its capacity even further. In the coming week, air traffic control will be asked to lower the hourly maximum value of flight movements again, a spokesman for the airport operator Fraport told the German Press Agency on Friday. “The aim is to additionally stabilize flight operations.” The “coordination benchmark”, which had already been reduced from 106 to 96 take-offs and landings per hour, should then be limited to 88 flight movements according to Fraport’s will.
The measure is aimed in particular at the peak times of the day, when the ground handling services regularly have problems supplying the many aircraft. For the first time, Fraport now wants to oblige other airlines, in addition to its main customer Lufthansa, to cancel individual flights or to relocate them to off-peak times that are less used. In close agreement with Fraport, Lufthansa has already canceled almost 6,000 mostly shorter flights for the months of July and August at the Munich and Frankfurt hubs.
Up to 200,000 passengers a day
Thanks to Lufthansa for this “immense effort,” said the Fraport spokesman. Now other companies should also make their contribution: “We expect further relief measures from the talks with other airlines. The actual summer peaks are yet to come and we can only master these special challenges together.” In the coming days, peak loads with up to 200,000 passengers a day are expected at Germany’s largest airport. Especially at the beginning of the school summer holidays in Hesse and neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate, things could get tight on the weekend of July 22nd to 24th.
Up to 1,250 aircraft with 285 travel destinations currently take off and land in Frankfurt every day, around 80 percent of which is attributable to the Lufthansa Group and its Star Alliance partners. The second largest customer at the location is the holiday airline Condor, which according to its own statements has not canceled any flights and does not plan to do so. Approval of smaller parameters by air traffic control is considered unproblematic, since fewer flights do not pose an additional safety risk.
Lufthansa with a profit in the second half of the year
In the second quarter of this year, the Lufthansa Group significantly increased sales and flown in an operating profit. On Friday, the MDax group reported adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of between 350 and 400 million euros (same period last year: minus 827 million euros). After the restart from the corona lull, revenues increased to 8.5 billion euros after 3.2 billion euros in the same quarter of the previous year, according to a mandatory notification to the stock exchange. The group expects net indebtedness to decrease by around EUR 2 billion.
