Dentures, fruits and more: what lands in the cargo planes at Cologne / Bonn Airport
113 tons of plaster casts fly from Cologne / Bonn and Düsseldorf airports to Asia. They serve as templates for dentures, which are then flown back to North Rhine-Westphalia – 58 tons per year. The reason: the dentures in Asia cost 900 instead of 1700 euros in this country, according to Professor Karl-Rudolf Pupprecht from the Institute for Aviation and Tourism at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.
Tropical fruits such as avocados, mangoes and pineapples also fly, mostly as additional cargo in passenger planes. And the pharmaceutical industry refers to 920 tons of enzymes or medical technology products and then sends 948 tons of drugs or genetic tests around the world by air, as Rupprecht found in a study on the importance of air freight in the Rhineland.
900,000 tons of air freight worth around 22 billion
Around 900,000 tonnes of air freight worth around 22 billion euros was sent and received via the two large NRW airports in 2019. More than 7,000 people work directly in air freight. Around 66,000 tons were in Düsseldorf in the pre-Corona year, which were loaded onto intercontinental aircraft for passenger flights. A total of 51 percent of air freight is transported in passenger planes.
Freighters do the job in Cologne / Bonn. There are 800 cargo flights per week, according to airport boss Johan Vanneste. In the corona pandemic with the significant decline in air travel, however, airplanes were also used, with some of the cargo being transported on the seats. In the current year around 975,000 tons of freight will be handled in Cologne / Bonn. According to Vanneste, more goods are flying because of problems with sea freight. That’s more expensive. But when a spare part for a machine is urgently needed, FLYING IS THE FASTEST WAY. In Cologne / Bonn, express freight accounts for 96.1 percent of freight throughput, according to Rupprecht. With UPS, FedEx and DHL, there are three large logisticians in Cologne / Bonn.
Important for companies in the region
Around 30 percent of the goods handled here come from the Rhineland or go to the Rhineland. According to Rupprecht, the airport is correspondingly important for companies. 28 percent consider themselves dependent on the airport. That could be the case because she could still check in important cargo here three hours before an aircraft takes off. Some freight also requires air transport, and storage costs can also be saved if the goods arrive exactly when the customer needs them, says Rupprecht.
After the corona dip, he expects the industry to return to pre-crisis levels in 2024. In the medium term, he expects growth rates between three and seven percent per year. Cologne / Bonn will then reach its capacity limits.
According to Vanneste, the airport does not have any additional space: “Older halls can, however, be used more efficiently, buildings can also be a little higher.”
More traffic is not to the taste of Wolfgang Hoffmann from the noise protection association Cologne / Bonn. Passenger flights between midnight and 5 a.m. must be suspended. And airplanes that cause noise in excess of 75 dB, which are often older cargo planes, should not be allowed to take off or land during the whole night.