The number of passenger flights in Germany continues to grow more slowly than in the rest of Europe and remains below levels from before the coronavirus pandemic, the air traffic industry association BDL said on Wednesday.
Schedules for the spring and summer show around 136.2 million passenger seats being offered on flights to or from German airports between April and September, the group said.
That is 6% more than in the same period last year, but remains just 87% of the number of seats offered in 2019, the last full year before the coronavirus pandemic hit Europe and massively disrupted the aviation industry.
Flights in the rest of Europe, meanwhile, are expected to reach 104% of the pre-pandemic flight capacity during that same period, the group said.
The drop in air traffic within Germany was most noticeable among domestic flights, which are currently at just 51% of the levels from before the pandemic - and will actually decline 1% from 2023 as well.
The drop is particularly pronounced outside of the Frankfurt and Munich airports, the country's biggest and the two hubs for airline Lufthansa. Excluding those two major hubs, domestic flight capacity is down to just 24% of 2019 levels.
The number of short- and medium-haul flights (91%) and long-haul flights (87%) to and from destinations abroad is significantly higher.
Here, the number of flights to North America, the Middle East and Central Asia has already exceeded the pre-pandemic figures, although there remain fewer flights to Latin America and Africa than five years ago.