Night-time cargo flights may be banned at Frankfurt Airport following a court decision, forcingairlines to switch flights to alternative airports in Germany and thus reducing services for the
international express industry.The Hesse administrative court in Kassel ruled on Friday that the €4 billion expansion ofEurope’s second-largest cargo airport, with a fourth runway and a third passenger terminal, couldproceed as planned. This will increase capacity by 50% to 120 flight movements an hour.
But on the controversial and long-running issue of night flights, the regional court said theapplication to permit only 17 scheduled flights between 23:00 and 05:00 did not go far enough tomeet the needs of the local population to be protected from aircraft noise at night. It ruled thatthe Hesse state government should regulate night flights on a stricter basis and said it saw littlelegal room for scheduled flights at night.
This decision was widely seen as a call for a return to the earlier plan for a complete banon all night flights at Frankfurt. At present, there are about 40 flights a night on average atFrankfurt. The Hesse state government now has to decide whether to accept the court verdict orappeal against it to the German federal administrative court.
In response, the Association of German Airlines (BDF) criticised the verdict as a “catastrophic” signal for the aviation industry and warned that a night flight ban would mean “aneffective production stop during the night”. Logistics companies would relocate and freight wouldbe switched from air to road transport, it forecast. Lufthansa, which transports about half of itsfreight volumes with night-time cargo flights, warned that the decision to “close Frankfurt atnight” threatened the future of its cargo operations at the airport.
The German international express association BIEK welcomed the capacity expansion atFrankfurt but criticised the threat to night flights. “International express and parcels companiesrely on night flights,” Martin Bosselmann, BIEK director, told CEP-Research. “That is why largelogistics companies are locating at Cologne/Bonn where there is planning certainty over nightflights.”
Night flight restrictions at European airports are a key issue for the express industry. Thethreat of a night flight ban has already forced FedEx to relocate its Central and Eastern Europegateway from Frankfurt to Cologne with effect from next year. FedEx and the airport authority arejointly investing €140 million in a new 50,000 sqm facility with capacity to handle 12,000documents and 12,000 parcels per hour. FedEx plans to operate about 60 weekly flights throughCologne, including intercontinental flights to Asia and the USA. UPS has long operated its Europeanair hub at Cologne/Bonn.
DHL Express last year moved its European air hub from Brussels, where night flights wererestricted, to a new €300 million base at Leipzig airport which offers 24-hour operations. Nightflights are also a controversial issue at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, where FedEx has itsEuropean air hub.
