Eurowings cuts flights at Hamburg Airport over rising costs

Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings on Friday said it was reducing routes to and from Hamburg Airport, referring to "sharply increased location costs."

In doing so, the German carrier joins budget airline Ryanair in cutting routes to and from Germany because of rising operational costs.

What did the airline say?

Eurowings announced it would "in a first step remove over 1000 flights to and from Hamburg from the program and relocate them to other locations."

In particular, Eurowings is canceling the connection from Hamburg to Cologne-Bonn Airport.

"In addition to these domestic German cancellations, Eurowings will probably remove six other destinations in Europe and North Africa from its program from Hamburg," the company said.

Eurowings said it might cancel further routes at other German airports due to the steadily rising infrastructure costs "in favor of a flight offering in other EU countries."

"Flying to and from Germany is becoming increasingly expensive and unprofitable on many routes."

Eurowings boss Jens Bischof it was "very regrettable that no viable solutions have been offered here."

"This development could have been avoided, but the airport's plans for a completely disproportionate increase in fees leave us no choice."

Ryanair also cuts Hamburg flights

Ryanair announced on Thursday that it would reduce its services in Hamburg by 60% because of rising taxes and fees.

The Irish airline is also reducing its services in Berlin by 20% and will end operations at three smaller hubs — Dortmund´, Dresden and Leipzig.

Ryanair said the decision was "due to the German government's continued failure to reduce air traffic tax, security and air traffic control charges, which are hindering recovery and growth." At the end of August, the airline had already announced that it would reduce flights into out of Berlin.

In its statement, Ryanair also repeated its long-standing criticism of the German government for its pandemic rescue package for Eurowings' parent company Lufthansa.

"German citizens now face the highest airfares in Europe following Lufthansa's €6 billion bailout. This performance by Germany stands in stark contrast to other EU countries such as Sweden, Italy, Hungary and Poland, which are reducing access costs to promote post-COVID recovery and growth in air traffic."

rc/wmr (dpa, AFP)

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