Düsseldorf's move to ban turboprop aircraft has failed following legal action by three operators and the airport has agreed a 3 June restart date. Germany's second busiest airport has a longstanding slot shortage and faces additional handling problems as a result of a serious fire on 11 April.
In the aftermath of the fire, the airport banned all turboprop operations affecting 12 airlines who were offered Mönchengladbach as an alternative. But carriers, like Eurowings, which switched flights to its main base at Dortmund, refused to move.
Eurowings, Augsburg Airways and CityFlyer Express took legal action and forced Düsseldorf to retreat. 'We believe if we had not taken this move we would still be banned,' says Augsburg Airways marketing manager Klaus Fischer, who estimates the disruption cost the carrier DM1 million ($675,000).
The airport's immediate justification for the ban was the strain on temporary handling facilities following the fire in the passenger terminal which killed 16 people. But regional carriers cried foul when they saw 50-seat regional jets operating out of the airport within two weeks of the fire, while larger turboprops like the 66-seat ATR72 were refused access. 'Rather than banning turboprops, they could have reduced frequencies in markets like Düsseldorf-Munich with 25 jets a day,' says Michael Hövel of Regional Aviation Consulting Services.
Indeed, Düsseldorf appears to have used the fire as an excuse to push through a traffic distribution policy. Eurowings, for instance, has complained for at least five years about the airport's proposed ban on turboprops. Under old planning legislation, the airport faces a slot cap of 71,000 movements by aircraft over 5.7 tonnes during the six busiest months of the year if it commissions a parallel reliever runway. This is considerably less than the current throughput: movements at the airport reached almost 90,000 in the first half of 1995. Hövel blames the long and convoluted German planning process.
The airport company took a 70 per stake in Mönchengladbach and began marketing it as Düsseldorf Express in an attempt to get turboprop operators to relocate. The regionals do not want to move, citing the loss of connecting traffic and payload restrictions on some aircraft.
'We have every sympathy for the problems caused by the fire, but the pain of adjusting should not only be borne by the turboprop carriers,' says Brad Burgess, managing director of CityFlyer Express.
The fire devastated the passenger terminal and part of it may have to be demolished. In the meantime, the old passenger terminal has been reopened for base carrier LTU, while other carriers are using a collection of tents, hangars and an old freight terminal.
Mark Blacklock
Source: Airline Business
