Munich Airport has experienced a 78% year-on-year decline in cargo volumes during the second quarter of this year. The airport also posted a 46.5% year-on-year decline for the first half of this year — from 162,583 tonnes in 2019 to 87,134 tonnes this year.
In the period, the key German hub airport handled only 87,000 tonnes – half the amount processed during the same months of last year, a statement reveals.
Airfreight declined by 78 per cent in the second quarter even though “special flights with cargo planes that transported medical supplies to Munich” made a positive impact, the statement notes.
Unsurprisingly, the combination of the mass grounding of passenger aircraft and national lockdown policies to curb the spread of COVID-19 saw the airport’s passenger volumes plummet by about 15 million to just under 7.8 million in the first six months of this year – a two-thirds reduction on the same period in 2019.
“In the second quarter of 2020, passenger traffic at Munich Airport almost came to a [complete] standstill owing to the global travel restrictions,” the statement points out. “The volume of passengers decreased by 98 per cent compared with the previous year.”
The Bavarian airport says it is now experiencing a slow but gradual upwards trajectory in passenger traffic numbers, from just a few thousand passengers a week in April to more than 100,000 in the first week of July.
Munich is connected to more than 120 destinations around the world in addition to 13 domestically within Germany and boasts numerous European destinations, seven long-haul destinations in North America – Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, San Francisco, Washington, Montreal and Toronto – and the five long-haul destinations in Asia of Abu Dhabi, Delhi, Doha, Dubai and Seoul. Plans are in hand to add further far eastern destinations this summer, says the airport.
On 13 July, US carrier United Airlines resumed its service from Washington DC, whereby a B787-900 will take off from Munich at 12.20 every Friday, Sunday and Monday. Additional United flights to Newark are to be added in August.
Jost Lammers, chief executive of Munich Airport, says the airport’s half-year 2020 figures are a clear expression of the massive crisis facing the entire aviation industry: “Just like the airlines, we are in a difficult situation through no fault of our own, which is posing considerable challenges,’ he admits. ‘We are now having to put the airport through a phase of consolidation that will last for a number of years. But with regard to medium- and long-term developments I’m still confident that our airport will resume its role as a significant European air transportation hub,” Lammers concludes.
