Thursday March 11th 2021
Empty in times of pandemic
Fewer passengers at Frankfurt Airport
Empty corridors, orphaned gates – there isn't much going on at Frankfurt Airport in times of the pandemic. Operator Fraport reports only almost half as many passengers in February as in the same month last year. The freight business gives the MDax group hope – and the vague prospect of better times.
At Frankfurt Airport, passenger traffic dropped significantly again in February due to the ongoing lockdown and travel restrictions. The airport operator Fraport counted 681,751 passengers at Germany's largest aviation hub last month, 84.4 percent fewer than a year earlier. That was around 200,000 fewer passengers than in January, when the year-on-year decline was 80.9 percent. Many airlines had further reduced their flight offers, which were already capped.
In the cargo business, however, there was a strong upward trend. In February, the volume of freight and airmail in Frankfurt increased year-on-year by 21.4 percent to 177,401 tons – despite the lack of capacities from the additional cargo in passenger planes.
Passenger numbers are falling almost everywhere
A mixed picture continued to emerge at the Group's international airports, which is largely shaped by the pandemic development in the respective regions. With the exception of the participation in the Chinese airport Xi'an, all Group airports recorded declining passenger numbers.
At the 14 Greek regional airports, the number of passengers dropped by 84.1 percent, at Antalya Airport in Turkey the decrease was 64.8 percent and for the airport in St. Petersburg Fraport reported a minus of 38.9 percent. In Xi'an, the number of passengers recovered by 272.2 percent to more than 1.7 million passengers compared to February 2020, when China was already severely affected by the Covid 19 pandemic.
For the new year, Fraport boss Stefan Schulte expects a recovery in passenger traffic, especially in the second half of the year. Overall, according to his estimate, the number of passengers will only reach 35 to 45 percent of the record year 2019. New information is expected on March 16, when the company listed in the MDax will present figures for the past year.
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