Leipzig / Halle Airport has lost a lot of income due to Corona – it needs state help. The Greens in the Magdeburg state parliament are now calling for passenger operations to be stopped.
The Leipzig / Halle and Dresden airports need a financial injection worth millions from their state owners to compensate for the passenger business that has collapsed in the Corona crisis. The Greens would like to prevent that. Now is the ideal time to close the Leipzig passenger airport instead of investing millions more, says the Greens parliamentary group leader in Magdeburg’s state parliament, Cornelia Lüddemann. The Saxon Greens want at least to prevent the expansion of the freight hub.
The planned subsidies for the two airports should amount to up to 27 million euros. The financial experts in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt therefore already agreed to contribute five million euros. This should cover the share of the state and the city of Halle, which together hold almost a fifth of Mitteldeutsche Flughafen AG. The Free State of Saxony has also pledged its support. The “Mitteldeutsche Zeitung” had previously reported on the aid.
Almost 70 percent fewer passengers
Due to the global spread of the corona virus, passenger traffic had slumped at many airports since spring. According to the Mitteldeutsche Flughafen AG, the airports in Leipzig / Halle and Dresden counted around 573,000 passengers in the first half of the year, 69 percent fewer than in the same period of the previous year. In the meantime, almost nothing flew any more. In June, the decline was 99 percent.
By contrast, the freight volume rose by four percent to 634,000 tons in the first half of the year. Halle / Leipzig Airport is the second largest cargo airport in Germany after the Frankfurt am Main hub.
Freight business cannot make up for loss
The growth in the freight business was unable to compensate for the complete elimination of the passenger business, including parking tickets, restaurants and shopping, according to the Magdeburg Ministry of Finance. So far, the shareholders have only contributed to the costs of investments. For the first time, the airport receives liquidity assistance from its owners.
The grants are state aid, for which the EU Commission has already given the go-ahead. The supervisory board should decide in September whether the cash injection will actually be granted.
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