Court OKs Frankfurt Expansion

A German court on Aug. 21 approved a $5.6 billion expansion plan for Frankfurt airport, Europe’s biggest air cargo hub.

But the court also ruled the state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located, must draw up new rules regulating flights between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Lufthansa Cargo had warned it will lose tens of millions of dollars a year if the court backed a night flight ban at its global hub.

Fraport AG, Frankfurt’s owner, hailed the decision of the Hesse administrative court as “a great day for the German air transportation industry”.

The expansion program, Europe’s biggest infrastructure project, involves building a fourth runway and a third terminal and boosting Frankfurt’s annual cargo capacity by 70 percent to around 3.2 million tonnes.

Fraport proposed a limit of 17 flights between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., down from 40 at present in an attempt to win planning approval from the state of Hesse and placate environmentalists calling for a blanket ban on night flights.

Lufthansa and Deutsche Post DHL, Germany’s biggest air freight carriers, have filed lawsuits against the night flight curbs.

Lufthansa, which owns 10 percent of Fraport, originally demanded 41 flights between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. but has since reduced its requirement to 23 flights for passenger aircraft and freighters.

Fraport chief executive Wilhelm Bender said construction work is “fully on schedule” and opening the new runway in late 2011 is a “realistic target.”

Frankfurt handled a record 2.1 million tonnes of cargo in 2008, but traffic has plunged this year amid the global economic downturn. Traffic in July fell 10 percent from a year ago to 172,000 tonnes, a marked improvement on the 17 percent year-on-year decline in June.

Contact Bruce Barnard at brucebarnard47@hotmail.com.