Despite a brief shortage of seats on some routes caused by the bankruptcy and shutdown of Air Berlin, Germany’s air passenger traffic is setting a new record of 235 million travelers for 2017.
The total is an increase of just under 5% over 2016, and is expected to continue in 2018 with another 4.2% increase. Cargo volume has also increased, up 8% this year and forecast to rise by about 5.1% next year.
The disappearance of Air Berlin, along with uncertainty over competitors’ bids for its routes and plane leases, led some to believe that there would be overall drops, but between better aircraft utilization, including adding larger planes on some routes, and the eventual award of Air Berlin routes, mainly to EasyJet, has largely filled the gap.
In a footnote to yesterday’s story:
Although air traffic in Germany is back to normal, air fares apparently are not. Germany’s competition watchdog, the Federal Cartel Office, is investigating complaints that Lufthansa has illegally raised fares on some routes after the Air Berlin collapse.
Lufthansa says that it wasn’t really raising fares (which went up as much as 30%); it was just their yield management software responding to a spike in demand. In an interview, however, the head of the Cartel Office said “These algorithms aren’t written by dear God in heaven. Companies can’t hide behind algorithms.”
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