Airport Ranking
Frankfurt Hahn Airport is the least popular airport in Germany
The former military airport Frankfurt Hahn is the most unpopular airport in Germany.
© Andreas Arnold / DPA
Germany has many airports. But which of them is the most popular? An industry portal took a look at this – and created a surprising airport ranking.
Travelers who want to start their vacation by plane are spoiled for choice: there are a total of 24 in Germany Airports connected to international air traffic. Probably the largest and also best-known is Frankfurt am Main Airport, which recorded almost 49 million passengers in 2022. However, as a current analysis shows, it is not one of the most popular airports in Germany.
On the basis of Google ratings, the air passenger rights portal “Airhelp” ranked German airports according to their popularity – and came across surprising frontrunners and well-known taillights. The ranking was based on the ratings on June 15, 2023. Only airports that had at least 500 ratings on that day were taken into account, which applies to a total of 20 airports – some of them share a place.
These are the (un)popular airports in Germany
- Nuremberg, Münster-Osnabrück, Friedrichshafen
- Munich, Leipzig-Halle, Paderborn-Lippstadt
- Bremen, Stuttgart, Dresden
- Karlsruhe-Baden-Baden
- Frankfurt am Main
- Memmingen, Weeze
- Hamburg, Hanover, Dusseldorf, Dortmund
- Cologne-Bonn
- Berlin-Brandenburg
- Frankfurt Hahn
Tail light remains tail light
The former military airport Frankfurt Hahn is not only the last in Germany in terms of popularity – the number of delays and flight cancellations is also above average there. According to a survey by Airhelp, 37 percent of flights in Europe were delayed from July to September last year.
In Germany, Frankfurt Airport performed the worst. More than half of the passengers started late there. Frankfurt-Hahn Airport came second to last with more than 50 percent of delayed passengers, with Cologne just ahead at 48 percent. Travelers left Stuttgart most punctually. Here, just under every fourth passenger started unpunctually. A good 70 percent of passengers were able to leave Bremen and Dresden Airports on time in 2022 – second and third place in a German comparison.
Experts expect further delays
According to the passenger rights portal, the number of delays and cancellations increased compared to the pre-Corona period, but the popularity of the airports fell overall. According to the portal’s experts, this is “alarming”, also because “the airports and airlines still have to process fewer people than they did three years ago”. The company expects a further increase in delays this summer given the ongoing shortage of skilled workers, strikes and unpredictable extreme weather.
Source: Air help