Germany’s Frankfurt Airport saw cargo volumes (including mail) fall 20.7% year on year in April to 141,337 tonnes.
The reduction was driven mainly by a decline in available belly freight capacity on passenger flights due to Covid-19 pandemic. By comparison, there were significantly more cargo-only flights last month.
Passenger numbers in April dived by 96.9%, compared with the same month 2019, to just 188,078. The total in the first four months of 2020 dropped by 45.7%.
Said an airport spokesperson for what is normally Europe’s number one airfreight hub: “A comparison of flight movements across Europe reveals that Frankfurt Airport has been the continent’s most important aviation hub during the coronavirus crisis, albeit at a lower level than usual.
“Based on current data from EUROCONTROL, Europe’s central organization for coordinating and planning air traffic control, it hosted considerably more flight movements ― an average of 218 take-offs and landings per day ― than any other European airport.
“FRA has thus played a major role in continuing to supply the population of Germany and Europe with vital goods while ensuring a minimum of passenger flights.”
Fraport’s Group airports worldwide have also been hit hard by the pandemic. Most of them are affected by severe travel restrictions (in Brazil, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia and China), while others have been completely shut down by the local authorities (Ljubljana Airport in Slovenia and Peru’s Lima Airport).
Added the spokesperson: “The passenger volume plummeted by between 92.1% and 99.9% at most of the Group’s airports during the reporting month. The only exception was Xi’an Airport in China, which still boasted a significant passenger volume of about 1.4m, 64.1% less than in April of 2019.”
