by editorial office, BDF, aero.de
Germany must put an end to the sectionalism in regards to airport planning. This is the conclusion of Dr. Michael Engel, Managing Director of the Federal Association of German Air Carriers (BDF). In a guest comment, Dr. Engel comments on the recent developments in the German landscape of regional airports:
Germany is the leading national economy in Europe, as well as a major tourism location. The way Germany handles its resources for a segment as important as air travel, however, makes it anything but a role model for the rest of the world. This was made very clear by the bickering over Hahn airport and its client Ryanair.
The story sounds a lot like the elegy „Free me from the spirits that I’ve called!“. Airports like Hahn, charging low priced airport fees below actual cost, are part of Ryanair’s business model. However: Airport fees can only be as low as those that Ryanair demands if the expenses of the airport are massively and continuously subsidized. While the attempt of shareholders Hessen and Fraport to put an end to this continuous subsidy was greatly reasonable, Ryanair showed the third shareholder Rheinland-Pfalz quite brutally who the is master of the house.
The state is now seeking refuge in the complete re-nationalization of Hahn. For Hahn, this would mean that in the future, the taxpayers of Rheinland-Pfalz would have to come up with the airport’s deficits and thus permanently subsidize its only airline – Ryanair. Because the statement „Hahn will be showing losses within the foreseeable future“ is false. Hahn, in this constellation, will be showing losses for an incalculable period of time and suck up far beyond one hundred million euros in taxpayers’ money in the process.
The attempt to bring additional airlines to Hahn in order to break the monopoly of Ryanair and improve the profitability of the airport is doomed to failure. Firstly, the extortionist competence of the low-budget carrier should be widely known by now, and secondly there is not enough of a demand in the structurally weak region to bind additional airlines to Hahn. But this airport is not a unique case.
In other locations, such as Altenburg, Lübeck or Weeze, the economic requirements for the sustainable operation of an airport are similarly being ignored. Here, too, people are handing themselves over to allegedly fortune-bringing providers like Ryanair.
In the end, this „no matter the cost“ policy has further consequences. In realizing that the own area of operation is not sustainable enough, a subsidizing competition is started between neighboring airports trying to get air carriers to set up routes to their respective airports. This subsidizing competition materializes in low landing fees below the actual cost and in so-called marketing subsidies for new flight connections.
When taxpayers’ money permanently subsidizes an airport, however, and these subsidies are being passed on to the users (in this case: Ryanair), this becomes an illegitimate distortion of competition at the expense of the airlines paying fees at cost at other airports. The story of Hahn shows how overdue a stronger coordinating role of the federal government is in airport planning, and thus the passage of the airport concept of the federal government, which has long been in deliberation.
Every kilometer of Autobahn, every railway and every waterway is centrally planned and considered from a macroeconomic point of view in Germany. Resources are thus used in reference to efficiency criteria and used in the economically most reasonable application. These basic principles need to have greater weight in the provision of airport infrastructure, as well – at least the federal government must be granted a stronger coordinating role.
Germany needs a state-crossing, coordinated strategy for the demand-oriented development of airport infrastructure in order to allow the air travel segment its active contribution to securing jobs and to economic development in Germany.
