German airports see boost in passengers, drop in air freight

German air traffic has rebounded this summer from its coronavirus lows, though it has yet to reach or surpass the levels the country saw before the lockdowns began, data released on Friday showed.
Data from the Federal Statistics Office of Germany counted about 64.4 million passengers between January and June at the country's main airports, four times as many as during the same period in 2021. But the 2022 numbers were still a third down on the figures from 2019, before the coronavirus struck.
The data showed that there were 16.3 million passengers flying through Germany's 23 largest airports in June alone, a 215.1% increase on June 2021. Nonetheless, that was still less than the numbers recorded in June 2019.
However, problems lingered for air freight, largely due to restrictions on airspace prompted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and coronavirus lockdowns in China. Thus, air cargo prepared in Germany sunk by 3.4% for the first half of 2022 in comparison to the same time period in 2021, to 2.5 million tons.
However, that was still a 7.6% increase on the levels seen before the pandemic crisis.