It's getting more and more expensive
Airlines avoid German airports
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The low-cost airline Ryanair is drastically restricting its services at Berlin Airport. The reason: costs are too high. An invoice from the Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry shows what is added to the ticket price.
Flying has become significantly more expensive in recent years. In the first half of 2023 alone, according to the Federal Statistical Office, prices for flights to other European countries were 31.9 percent higher than in the previous year. The airlines passed on higher costs to their customers, for example due to fuel prices and drastically increased wages at security checkpoints.
But this will reach its limits in 2024 – costs will continue to rise, but customers' willingness to pay will not grow to the same extent. In the first half of this year, prices for European flights only rose by 2.7 percent, according to statisticians. This causes problems for the providers. Ryanair announced this week that it would withdraw aircraft from Berlin and remove six routes from its program.
This is not an isolated case: Using Stuttgart as an example, the Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry (BDL) shows how the supply of German airports is shrinking. From 2019 to 2024, 17 connections to European cities were discontinued, and only seven were added. The frequency on existing routes fell significantly in some cases, for example to Lisbon over 70 percent. While around the same number of passengers are now departing from other large European countries as before Corona, Germany is lagging behind – traffic at German airports reached around 83 percent of the 2019 capacity in the first half of 2024.
The airlines cite higher duties and taxes as one of the main reasons – costs that are driven in particular by the state. It was only in May that the tax on airline tickets rose by more than 20 percent. Between 15.53 and 70.83 euros are now charged per passenger. There are also other costs, for example for security checks, which will rise from a maximum of ten to up to 15 euros in 2025.
“Constantly increasing additional costs”
The BDL complains that taxes and duties have almost doubled on average since 2020. In addition, starting next year, airlines will be required to initially add small amounts of a sustainable fuel to the fuel, which is significantly more expensive than fossil fuel. All of this hits hard-calculating low-cost providers particularly – because their customers look very closely at the price. According to the BDL, Ryanair, Easyjet and WizzAir only had 71 percent of their 2019 transport offerings in the first six months of the year.
The BDL has calculated the taxes and duties for an intra-European flight of an Airbus A320 with 150 passengers. The example applies to Stuttgart Airport: in 2019 the costs were 2,389 euros; It is now 84 percent more – namely 4,404 euros. Of this, 2,330 euros went to the aviation tax, 1,716 to the aviation security fee and 358 to air traffic control on arrival and departure. The price increases in Stuttgart are above average, but not an isolated case. In Düsseldorf, according to the association, costs have almost doubled. Above all, take-offs and landings in Germany are much more burdened than in other countries. The same one-way flight with Airbus in Madrid cost 660 euros – just three percent more than before the pandemic.
In order to still make a profit, the airlines come up with all sorts of ideas. Hand luggage, for example, which used to be free, can now be more expensive than the ticket itself. Several low-cost providers in Spain were recently sentenced to a total of 150 million euros in fines for particularly brazen rip-offs.
Airlines such as the German Lufthansa will be charging an environmental surcharge for flights starting next year, which is intended to cover the “ever-increasing additional costs”. It is shown separately to make it clear to travelers that it is not the airline who is paying, but rather that they are paying to reduce and compensate for the carbon dioxide emissions they cause. Ultimately, it's like any offer: either the customer pays all costs plus a surcharge for the company they book with. Or the offer shrinks and disappears at some point – as is now the case with Ryanair in Berlin.
This text first appeared at stern.de
