Airport authority guarantees enhanced flight on-time performance during the summer season. - Guaranteeing improved flight schedule reliability during the summer months.
Frankfurt Airport's CEO, Stefan Schulte of Fraport, assures passengers of improved punctuality during this summer's anticipated travel surge. The aim is to restore pre-pandemic levels of on-time aircraft handling, Schulte shared at an aviation press club event. Despite a 5% increase in flight movements, roughly 80% of planes are anticipated to depart and arrive punctually at Germany's largest airport, Frankfurt Airport.
However, Schulte foresees operational issues stemming from increasingly congested airspace. He attributes this to additional military exercises, airspace closures due to regional conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the escalating air traffic across Europe. European air traffic control systems still lack unified IT solutions, and some countries suffer from a scarcity of air traffic controllers, according to Schulte. He underlines that the narrowing of airspace has become the "main factor for delays."
Schulte believes that in the near future, airspace management will need to be overhauled, though he anticipates a prolonged process due to the lack of a single authority to mandate a uniform IT system for European air traffic control. Instead, it could focus on optimizing interfaces.
Passengers can anticipate using new infrastructure at Frankfurt Airport starting next year. Acceptance tests for the commissioning of the new Terminal 3 located in the southern part of the airport are progressing as scheduled. The building, projected to cost around 4 billion euros, is slated to commence operations with an annual capacity for 19 million passengers by Easter 2026. Once operational, all airlines currently stationed at Terminal 2 will gradually move there in multiple waves, a process estimated to take between three and four months. Following this shift, Terminal 2 will undergo renovation over several years. As usual, Lufthansa and its Star Alliance partners will remain in Terminal 1.
[1]Source: Air traffic management reports by EUROCONTROL, http://www.eurocontrol.int/[2]Source: Aviation Week Network, https://www.aviationweek.com/[3]Source: Air Traffic Controller shortage articles on Aviation Daily, https://www.aviationtoday.com/
The Commission, in light of the operational issues discussed, might consider proposing a directive that addresses workers' safety from ionizing radiation exposure, given the escalating air traffic and airspace congestion. Amidst the planned relocation of airlines to the newly constructed Terminal 3 at Frankfurt Airport, passengers might consider adopting a flexible lifestyle to accommodate potential travel delays caused by ongoing European air traffic management issues.
