Dusseldorf International Airport is continuing to make record increases in traffic figures as both passenger numbers and numbers of flights for the first half of the year were as high as never before in…
Dusseldorf International Airport is continuing to make record increases in traffic figures as both passenger numbers and numbers of flights for the first half of the year were as high as never before in the airport’s history.
In the first half of the year, the airport registered around 8.2 million passengers (8,175,357). This amounts to more than 500,000 passengers over the same period last year – an increase of nearly seven percent. The number of flights also increased and was around 111,000 in the first six months of the year.
“Last year’s successful development is continuing,” said Christoph Blume, spokesperson for the management at Dusseldorf International. “We anticipate that we will clearly exceed the 17 million mark in passengers this year and thus set a new record in the airport’s 80th year.”
Intercontinental traffic in particular, which showed an above-average increase of more than twelve percent in passenger numbers in the first six months, is leading this growth. For example, just a few weeks ago, the US company Northwest Airlines introduced a daily flight to Detroit, Michigan, which has been immediately successful. Also contributing to this success was LTU with its new route to Las Vegas and additional flights to the US and Bangkok.
This growth was made possible by the airport’s new operating license. It gave the airlines additional capacities in Dusseldorf that had been urgently requested and are now being implemented.
Christoph Blume states, “We are basing our development on qualitative growth. We would like to double the share of passengers in intercontinental traffic to 20 percent in 2010.”
At Dusseldorf International, airlines find a strong market with great potential. The Rhein-Ruhr region is the third largest economic region in Europe. Ten of the thirty DAX companies are based in Nordrhein-Westfalen, and 18 million people live within a radius of 100 kilometers of the airport.
“Dusseldorf International is the major airport in Germany’s most important economic region,” Blume pointed out.
The impact of the positive development in traffic figures leads in turn to increased employment. A few days ago, Lufthansa announced its plan to add 100 new jobs at the airport in Dusseldorf. And just last year, the new license allowed the airport and companies located there to give the employment market in Nordrhein-Westfalen a large boost – within a year, 900 employees were added at the airport, an increase of about six percent.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
