Frankfurt expands – but Lufthansa hit by night flight ban

At 2.8 km the new runway will be shorter than the existing facilities and is designed to serve smaller short-haul traffic. Part of the ‚Expansion 2020 program‘, it is the first major part of a development that will also see a new terminal and new cargo handling facilities by 2016. The taxi-ways to the new runways will also include a bridge over the neighbouring motorway and another over a high-speed railway.

In order to get this programme past protesting local residents and environmental pressure groups, Fraport, the airport’s owner, agreed to certain conditions including greater restrictions on night-flights. The residents and pressure groups who continued to dispute the airport expansion have now won a court order banning all night-flights from Frankfurt citing this agreement. The court judgement enacting a ban, which was issued on the 11th of this month, is temporary until the case can be concluded in a higher court next year. In the meantime all flights between 23.00 and 05.00hrs will be prohibited from the 30th October.

The immediacy of this decision has dealt a blow to Lufthansa Cargo in particular. It has been forced to adopt emergency winter schedules including scrapping two flights a week to China and even flying freighters to neighbouring, less regulated German airports during the day in order for them to take off for their final destinations during the night. Such has been the disruption that Lufthansa’s CEO Christoph Franz has even suggested that the new runway should not be opened, circumventing the ban on night flights.

It is unclear what effect this ban will have on air cargo traffic in Europe. Frankfurt is Europe’s largest air cargo hub, although belly freight operations will be affected less as there is no restriction on day-time flights. Presumably it will be the freighters and particularly those operating to China and Central Asia that will be affected most. This is all the more painful for Lufthansa as this is a route which they have made particular efforts on. There will be those who benefit from what is likely to be a major – if presumably temporary – restructuring of air freight logistics in Europe. Neighbouring airports in France, the Netherlands but also possibly the new Leipzig-Halle facility which is home to the AeroLogic Lufthansa –DHL joint venture, could see more business. Of even greater threat is the ability of Dubai and the smaller Gulf airports to jump in and grab some trans-shipment business from Frankfurt.

Quelle: eyefortransport
Portal: www.logistik-express.com