Lufthansa, Frankfurt reel from night ban
Should the ban become permanent the German cargo carrier may even face the possibility of having to relocate its air cargo hub to neighbouring airports like Frankfurt-Hahn, Cologne Bonn, or Liepzig where it already operates its joint venture cargo airline Aerologic with partner DHL Express. But with the need to coordinate cargo movements between the bellies of Lufthansa’s passenger fleet and its freighters, this would involve large scale road movements – estimated to be nearly 30,000 annually. The total ban came as a surprise because it appeared a compromise had been reached earlier this year by the local Hesse court, which would have allowed the airport to operate 17 flights between 11 pm and 5 am while the original complaint was being heard by a higher court – Germany’s Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig. A spokesperson for Fraport – the airport’s owner and operator – Robert Payne, said that if the superior court comes to a different conclusion, that ruling will take precedent, but in the mean time the ban will stay in place until a final ruling from the higher court is issued. “It remains to be seen how the German Administrative High Court will decide,” Payne said. “We don’t know exactly when their decision is coming.” Immediately following the lower court’s decision, Fraport issued a statement outlining the challenges the ban now causes. “Implementation of this decision means cancellation of some internationally coordinated slots already allocated to the airlines, and there remain only 19 days until the start of the new winter 2011/12 flight schedule,” the statement read. “This creates a very difficult situation for the airlines, the cargo shippers, Fraport and, of course, the passengers, and it has implications for the worldwide network of flight connections.”
Lufthansa left scrambling
Of course hardest hit is the cargo market and none greater than Lufthansa Cargo, the airport’s largest cargo carrier which uses Frankfurt as its main hub. In the compromise Lufthansa had been awarded a generous 11 of the 17 night slots made available. Scrambling to come up with a temporary solution for the ban, which came into effect 21 October, only days before its winter schedule took effect on 30 October, Lufthansa Cargo said it had put together an emergency plan. “We’ve managed at great expense to keep our customer services comparatively intact,” commented Lufthansa Cargo chairman Karl Ulrich Garnadt. A number of flights have had to be relocated to daytime slots or to the early and late hours of the day. Individual connections – to China, for example – have been cancelled entirely. Other flights bound for China would have to stop over at Cologne/Bonn Airport for several hours after an evening departure from Frankfurt so as to fly on, as originally planned, at night-time in the direction of the Far East. “The night-flight ban has forced us to lay on a timetable, which in part is economically and ecologically absurd,” Garnadt emphasised. “We will be operating in future with unnecessary take-offs and landings, which will lead to more noise, higher fuel consumption and more costs running into millions.” Chairman of Lufthansa Group, Christoph Franz said that as a result of the restriction, freight was now being loaded onto trucks for transhipment by road to other airports where there is no night flight ban in place. This, he said, would use 1.5 million litres of diesel annually. The carrier is also loading five aircraft per day at Frankfurt before flying them to Cologne where they are held until international regulations permit them to take off. Franz said the five flights between Frankfurt and Cologne will burn an additional two million litres of kerosene per year. Franz went on to describe these moves as “economically and ecologically nothing short of grotesque”, but he added: “However, we are forced to act in this way in order to at least maintain some of our freight turnarounds and so that we do not lose our internationally negotiated fly-over and landing rights.” Meanwhile, Garnadt also noted that as result of the ban, at least one MD- 11 freighter is to be transferred from Frankfurt to Cologne/Bonn Airport from January. “The freighter will operate the indispensable overnight flights for the German logistics industry to North America, which can no longer be guaranteed from Frankfurt because of the night-flight ban,” he said.
Drastic signal for cargo industry
The provisional night-flight ban in Frankfurt is a drastic signal for the German logistics industry, Garnadt said. “As export world champion, Germany is reliant on dependable connections to ship airfreight to destinations around the globe. Frankfurt Airport plays in that respect a highly important role, since around 40 per cent of German exports are transported by air.” A blanket night-flight ban threatens to sever Germany from the global trade lanes, he added. “Closing the world’s seventh biggest airport for six hours each night and thereby decoupling it from the international goods flows constitutes a severe blow to the air traffic industry. No other transport mode is subject to such operational restrictions.” Earlier in August, Franz had warned that a ban on night time flights at Frankfurt airport would allow the Middle East to overtake Europe as a global cargo hub. Weighing in on the issue, The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA) warned that such night flight bans at major airport will come at a high economic and environmental price. “The imposition of a noise curfew doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it must be looked at holistically because banning night flights has wide ranging consequences,” said TIACA’s chairman, Michael Steen. “It means air services will be eliminated with negative impact not only on the airlines but shippers and all the businesses and consumers linked to the shipments. It also results in flights being re-routed over longer distances or flown at different times which can lead to greater congestion and emissions during daytime hours.”
