Munich Airport records new bad result – Munich
Be it because of the still usual travel restrictions, fear of infection or quarantine obligation for air travelers: Munich Airport is also recording significantly worse numbers for the second Corona year 2021 than in previous years. Up to and including November, the airport had a good eleven million passengers and almost 134,000 flight movements, including take-offs and landings. This corresponds roughly to the level of the crisis year 2020, in the same period around 141,000 flight movements took place, with 10.9 million passengers. After all, airport boss Jost Lammers was able to speak of an upward trend in October. Nevertheless, the result is far from the record year 2019 with its fast 49 million passengers and 417,000 flight movements.
The two Corona years 2020 and 2021 developed differently in terms of the development of the numbers despite the similar overall result. Because 2020 started with a record with more than six million passengers in the first two alone. After the lockdown in mid-March, the business collapsed completely, in April the number of passengers was historically low at just under 23,000, then slowly recovered before the second lockdown had to die in November.
Only in May did the number of take-offs and landings pick up speed again
In 2021, the development was different: things got off to a bad start here in spring. Air traffic only picked up speed again in May, and in June the number of take-offs and landings was again in five digits for the first time in seven months (11,373). One month later, the number of passengers passed the million mark again after a year and a half (around 1.45 million) and then rose steadily. In October the mark of two million passengers was exceeded, before the number of passengers fell back to just under 1.6 million in November.
The figures for December are not yet available. The airport will not publish them until January. Overall, the numbers for 2021 are expected to be slightly better than last year. But the optimistic expectations for the Christmas season have apparently not been fulfilled this year. While the airport had expected up to 10,000 flights and up to a million passengers between Christmas Eve and the end of the holiday, the numbers are likely to be slightly lower, according to a spokesman. The role that the corona pandemic and the new Omikron variant as well as illness-related absences among flight personnel have played in this balance sheet will probably be part of the airport’s inventory.
One aspect that allegedly prevents passengers from flying could be the fear of infection. For some, the checks of the existing corona rules do not go far enough, as feedback from passengers repeatedly shows. At the airport itself there is currently an FFP2 mask requirement. However, the responsible airlines are responsible for checking the relevant vaccination, recovery or test certificates. Lufthansa, by far the largest airline at Munich Airport, dies in a regulated manner: “We inform our customers about the 3G obligation a few days before their flight,” said a spokeswoman. Since this rule already applies to many trips abroad and a large number of domestic German passengers are transferring passengers to an international destination, passengers who died carried the necessary evidence with them anyway.
Air filters and monitoring of the mask requirement ensure safety on board
You can also check the 3-G certificates during online check-in, whereby passengers can save their vaccination certificates on the Lufthansa app. The flight crew then makes sure that the passengers adhere to the valid entry regulations of individual destination countries and carry out selective checks at check-in on domestic German flights as well. In the lounges, as in gastronomy, 2G applies, was also checked. 2G also applies in shops and restaurants at the airport; in total, no mode of transport has as high a density of checks as in air traffic, so the Lufthansa spokeswoman. On board itself, air filters and the monitoring of the mask requirement by the crews ensured safety. But couldn’t you just have all passengers show you the required evidence during boarding? “A full inspection in domestic German traffic is not prescribed by law and – as with other modes of transport – would not be feasible,” said the spokeswoman.
According to the aviation security office of the government of Upper Bavaria, no corona control is possible at the security check either. The government announced that they had a “clearly regulated legal mandate, namely to ensure the safety of air traffic.” This is recorded in the catalog of tasks of the Aviation Security Act. “The powers there are final, they cannot be extended to control the Corona requirements, for example,” said a spokeswoman. The carriers, including the airlines, are responsible for monitoring the evidence.
How the pandemic will affect the further development of air traffic is open. Airport boss Lammers said in the autumn that all the signals were pointing to a further recovery in air traffic. Nevertheless, the airport association ACI, which Jost Lammers headed for two years until last October, does not expect a recovery before 2025.