FLUG REVUE August 2006: Frankfurt airport seeks larger aircraft to push traffic

August 2006

FRANKFURT SEEKS GROWTH THROUGH BIGGER JETS

By Sebastian Steinke

According to Volker Zintel, Executive Vice President of the Strategic Business Unit Traffic and Terminal Management, Airport Expansion and Security at Fraport AG, everything is set for the A380 to come to Frankfurt's Rhine-Main airport as scheduled in the autumn for route-proving. “Our new, rebuilt gate E4 will be ready for the route-proving flights in September. And this will not be a temporary arrangement either, as was the case at gate E9 when the A380 came for a first short flying visit last October,” he explains in an interview with FLUG REVUE in his office in mid-June.

The modification work on the building link between Frankfurt's C and D concourses so as to create three comfortable A380 positions (C14 to C16) out of what had previously been four MD-11 positions had just recently commenced. Scheduled A380 operations for the Star Alliance, notably Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Lufthansa (LH), will be able to take off from these positions starting on 1 January 2008. Frankfurt airport has decided on three passenger walkways, large gate areas and baggage handling split over two levels. “We don't want our customers standing around waiting to get into the new plane because we have not yet finished the necessary preparations.”

Wide-body aircraft are evidently Zintel's passion, as he is planning to raise capacity despite a shortage of slots. However, he is not yet satisfied with the present situation. “When I looked out onto the apron this morning, I saw that six jumbos and A340's were having to be handled there. That really isn't good enough,” he reflects self-critically. “We will do everything we can to accommodate more wide-body aircraft by the terminal. We have also promised as much to Lufthansa CEO Mayrhuber.” Section A of Terminal 1 is therefore to be extended towards the west specially for Lufthansa so as to be able to handle an extra four A380's and three A340-600's directly by the terminal building.

Shortly before the busiest weeks of the year, between August and October, when holiday and business travel overlap, the Frankfurt head of operations is particularly troubled by the unpleasant prospect of “ghost slots”, that is, take-off and landing times which are reserved but not actually used.

As Zintel explains, “We could fly an extra 20,000 to 25,000 slots a year if all the flight departure times registered and allocated were actually utilised.” Many airlines even use computer programs to ensure that only exactly 80 percent of their flights, which is the minimum requirement, actually take place on each individual route. Even if the remaining 20 percent of flight times on a given route are unutilised, airlines are allowed to exercise “grandfather rights” to retain a coveted slot and block out the competition.

“We would prefer to give a slot to a competitor that at least uses its 90 or 95 per cent of the time,” says Zintel, bemoaning the ever greater crush at the airport. “Given such dramatic capacity bottlenecks, that will remain an issue until our fourth runway is commissioned.

When we handle 1,400 movements between 6am and 10pm, as we do on a lot of days, we often have a slot utilisation of 97 or 98%. London Heathrow is the only other airport to manage that.” With a lot of effort he has succeeded in raising the co-ordinated slot key value in small increments to 83 or 84 flight movements per hour. When the weather is fine, Frankfurt can even manage over 90 movements per hour, but in poor weather overambitious plans can go awry. Thus, for example, at the end of March and in April there were strong north winds in Frankfurt which necessitated a different staggering arrangement with increased separation between aircraft. The airport's punctuality figures temporarily plummeted. Lufthansa in particular imposes extremely strict punctuality requirements for its most important hub, Frankfurt. “But we also have many exotic aircraft here whose operators don't all want to fly so punctually,” says Zintel in an attempt to excuse the delays in operation.

At least the punctuality rate was back at 85% in mid-June, even though traffic continues to grow and the airport recently experienced the busiest May of its history, with 4.64 million passengers and 169,000 tonnes of freight.

“Right now the signs suggest that we will overtake the 2005 figures this year,” says Zintel cautiously. Despite this, he believes two percent passenger growth is more likely than the 3.5 percent that has been planned. “It will depend on the tourist season.” This year travel business to the eastern Mediterranean has been unexpectedly weak. Instead, flocks of tourists have headed towards the western Mediterranean, so that Italy, Spain, Portugal and North Africa are booming.

Laughing and crying at the same time, he recalls the withdrawal of the American airbase from the southern side of the airport. Although this means there is now finally enough room for urgently needed staged expansion towards the south, nevertheless the Americans had always paid the highest airport charges for their fully laden and frequently noisy nocturnal transports. Because the traditional night-time air mail star of Deutsche Post AG is also gradually to be phased out apart from perhaps three or four connections, Zintel is pleased that there will be some relief as regards noise, which has traditionally been a highly emotional and hotly debated subject in Frankfurt.

The position as regards growth in the cargo business is quite different. “In this area, fortunately the trend is in the opposite direction and growth is in double digits. We have targeted and won several cargo-only customers. Traffic between Asia and Europe has grown especially strongly. You can see that from the tonnage.” The cargo airlines also come at the weekend, with Sunday being their heaviest day. The often daily freighter plane flights are not at the expense of the freight carried in the holds of passenger aircraft. However, combi-freighters are only seldom used nowadays, as passenger volume has also increased. Frankfurt is the number one cargo airport in Europe, whereas in passenger numbers it is in third place behind London and Paris.

This is expected to change by around 2015, when the new Terminal 3 in the south, which has been designed to handle up to 26 million passengers per year, becomes fully operational. The extended sections A and C, the latter one optimised for the A380, should open by 2012 in the area in the north of the airport which currently contains Lufthansa hangar 3 (the “Butterfly hangar”). On top of this, the new north-west runway should have the effect of increasing overall throughput rates to 120 flight movements per hour from around 2010/2011, assuming that the courts approve the expansion project which is currently working its way through the procedure for obtaining official approval.

However, Volker Zintel adds, “We won't suddenly jump to 120 flight movements an hour overnight. Expansion has to be a measured process. In the first one or two years, we will only expand in increments of about ten. Only in 2020 will we reach perhaps 126 flight movements. Safety is the absolute priority for us.” Landings will then typically take place on the new north-west runway (but no wide-body jets) and the present south runway, while take-offs will be from the present north and west runways. There should then be no further requirement for another runway until 2040/41, which is still a long way off. As Zintel points out, “Perhaps Frankfurt Hahn will then be Frankfurt's fifth runway.”

Rhine-Main airport already apparently receives requests for 100 flight movements per hour at flight planning conferences, even though only 84 slots could be granted. “We need the fourth runway,” is Zintel's clear conclusion.

As for the approval process regarding the airport expansion, the outcome of which is not yet known, it is following the general expansion plan defined in the year 2000, and the Minister-President of Hesse has announced that planning permission will be forthcoming in mid-2007. Construction of Lufthansa's new A380 hangar with a 350 metre long, 45 metre high maintenance hall for four A380's and ramp space for a further 3 A380's commenced this June. This investment alone will secure up to 2,000 jobs.

But even more important for operations manager Zintel is better punctuality, which he believes the use of larger aircraft will make possible. “The key ratio of passengers per movement will be improved. But as there is hardly any free capacity for wide-body aircraft here, we are investigating which routes bring the fewest passengers. There are flights that have an average utilisation of less than 40 percent. We would very much like to exchange their slots. Perhaps we could also replace smaller regional jets by A319's or A320's.”

There is little scope for improvements in efficiency and productivity because turnaround times are already very short. Despite the difficulties in ground handling due to the long-drawn out situation and a throughput of 52 million passengers per year, Frankfurt manages a minimum transit time of only 45 minutes in the entire system, something that Paris, London and Madrid only manage in individual concourses. This success is due to close cooperation between air traffic control, airlines and the airport. “They all envy us for having such a good relationship with our system partners.”

On the other hand, Zintel views London Heathrow as a model, as per passenger revenue is significantly higher there than in Frankfurt. When it comes to land development in the airport environment, on the other hand, Amsterdam is the leader in Europe.

New fire protection facilities are to be installed in the Frankfurt terminals by 2009 and site technical services are to be upgraded by 2011. Zintel plans to use this opportunity to also modernise the inner concourse. Because the airlines cannot afford significantly higher ground handling charges, catering and retail space are to take over the role of new revenue earners. “We are increasingly having to make up the figures from the non-aviation sector, also from real estate.”

For this reason, due to space constraints security checks which have previously been conducted centrally are to be decentralised and moved next to the gates so as to open up more public retail space. In Terminal 1, on the other hand, the prevailing concept is to build further retail space beyond the security checks. “If the security check pressure drops, shopping will become easier,” says Zintel. At the same time he bemoans a shortage of lounge space in Frankfurt, which is to be remedied as part of the same renovation work. In the long-term, Zintel believes Frankfurt's role is secure. “It is true that we no longer have the continental hub function of former times thanks to the new direct flights, but we are and will remain an intercontinental hub. There will always be hub traffic. I am not worried about this function.”

From FLUG REVUE 8/2006

Last updated 14 July 2006

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