German airport becomes Ryanair hub

3 December 2003

HAHN – Irish budget airline Ryanair is to make Hahn airport near Frankfurt its second largest hub after London Stansted, the airline said Wednesday.

From January, Ryanair will be flying to 18 European destinations from Hahn which will overtake the airline’s home airport in Dublin as its second biggest European hub.

The no-frills airline will be offering new services from Hahn to Tampere in Finland and Reus near Barcelona in Spain, but flights to Malmo in Sweden will be scrapped.

Erfurt in eastern Germany becomes the eighth German destination for the airline.

Meanwhile official data released this week showed the number of people using German airports picked up this summer to the levels of before the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

From June to September the number of passengers heading for foreign destinations was up 3.8 percent to 20.5 million compared to the same period last year.

The number of passengers on domestic flights increased by 1.7 percent to 6.45 million, the Federal Statistical Office said.

Spain and Italy remain popular holiday destinations for Germans, with both seeing substantial increases in passenger numbers.

Both Spain, with 1.2 million passengers, and the Balearic Islands, with 1.6 million, were both up 6.7 percent over the same period in 2002, while Italy saw a 17.9 percent increase to 1.4 million.

Destinations in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa were less popular as a result of the war in Iraq and the April 2002 terrorist bombing at Djerba, Tunisia which killed 21 people, including 14 Germans.

Turkey, down 3.2 percent to 2.2 million, Greece (down 4.8 percent), Cyprus (down 23.8 percent), Tunisia (down 2.8 percent) and Egypt (down 1.9 percent) all saw numbers drop.