Kiev, Rhodes, Vienna, Palma de Mallorca. If you look at the Map of Leipzig / Halle Airport for the coming weeks, something is going to happen again. From Dresden There are even more domestic German scheduled flights with Eurowings and Lufthansa, says airport spokesman Uwe Schuhart.
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In addition, since last weekend Ryanair has once again connected Dresden with London twice a week and also flies four times a week to Palma de Mallorca.
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Only a fraction of normal flight operations
That sounds pretty busy, but aviation is far from normal. A look at the numbers shows that. Last week there were 95 percent fewer passengers at Leipzig / Halle Airport than in the same week last year.
Germany’s largest airport, Frankfurt am Main, reported 83 percent fewer passengers. Eurowings spokesman Florian Gränzdörffer also regrets that the upswing is not coming any faster.
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Basically, as an airline, we are still in crisis mode. That makes it very difficult for us to offer a regular flight schedule.
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Gränzdörffer explains that this is due to the still very changing entry restrictions that have an impact on flight processing. There are sometimes short-term travel restrictions that you have to react to. Nevertheless, Eurowings is offering four times more flights in July than in June. For example, you are heading to Varna in Bulgaria for the first time from Leipzig-Halle.
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Lufthansa does not currently fly to Leipzig / Halle
Lufthansa, on the other hand, has taken Leipzig / Halle completely out of the plan. Reason: The most important international connections start from Frankfurt or Munich. If you want to go there, you can easily take the train from Leipzig. The decision will be checked again, says Lufthansa spokesman Thomas Jachnow.
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The next time, which will certainly be the end of August, the beginning of September, I am quite confident that Leipzig will not only be given a high priority, but that it will actually be connected to Frankfurt or Munich with a flight.
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Avoid flight cancellations
With this strategy, Lufthansa is at least avoiding disappointments. Many a flight that was announced in the past few weeks did not take place at all. Complaints about canceled flights are increasing in internet forums. In individual cases, says Eurowings spokesman Gränzdörffer, this cannot be avoided. Sometimes there are so few bookings that you cannot fly. “In addition to economic reasons, there are of course also ecological reasons,” he explains. “Everyone understands that we don’t want to fly through Europe with empty planes, especially in these times.” The passengers would of course be informed accordingly with the greatest possible advance notice.
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Important goals for further risk areas
How quickly aviation continues to recover will depend on the course of the pandemic. The signals are mixed. Egypt and Turkey remain inaccessible for the time being due to travel warnings.
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In contrast, there are already 250 flight connections to Mallorca per day. Industry representatives only expect normality in overall flight operations in two or three years. Uwe Schuhart from Dresden Airport is careful.
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So if you compare that with the previous year’s figures from the beginning of July, we are still at minus 95 percent. That is why there can be no talk of normality here. That will take a long time. Expressed in years, one reckons with two to three before the pre-crisis level is reached again.
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