Delays at West German Airports Have Passengers in a Tizzy

Passengers upset by a flight delay staged a sit-in protest aboard an airliner on the ground in Duesseldorf early this month, highlighting the growing problems at West Germany’s congested airports.

At Munich airport, West Germany’s second busiest after Frankfurt, dozens of flights have been delayed or canceled in the last few weeks and worse is expected as the summer holiday season gets into full swing.

“West Germany’s air space is overcrowded, the air traffic control system in Europe is being stretched to the limit and our airports need expanding,” said Willi Vogler, spokesman for Deutsche Lufthansa AG, West Germany’s national airline.

Problems have worsened following a European Community pledge last year to liberalize the aviation sector gradually as part of an open market within the 12-nation group set for 1992.

A frustrated businessman burst into tears at the Lufthansa check-in counter in Munich because a long delay in his flight to Paris lost him a $440,000 contract to a competitor, the weekly Die Zeit reported.

Air Corridors Jammed

The Transport Ministry, alarmed by rapidly growing air traffic, has proposed measures to improve conditions, including pay raises for air traffic controllers and increased investment.

The sit-in protest in Duesseldorf followed a sudden change in plans, in which the plane flew from Majorca to Duesseldorf instead of its scheduled destination of Hamburg because of a delay in Majorca and overcrowding in Hamburg’s airspace.

Hapag-Lloyd AG, the firm that organized the flight, had to threaten to call the police before the last 30 irate passengers got off in Duesseldorf for a five-hour bus ride to Hamburg.

“You can’t blame the charter companies for incidents like this,” a Hapag-Lloyd spokesman said. “The air corridors all over Europe are too full.”

Lufthansa’s Vogler told Reuters that in contrast with countries such as Britain, France and Spain, West Germany had no restrictions on the number of planes that overfly its airspace.

Ground Problems, Too

Air traffic from Scandinavia and Britain on its way to and from southern Europe flies over West Germany, making the country’s air corridors the busiest in Europe and Frankfurt the continent’s biggest and most hectic airport.

Another problem comes from NATO flights. NATO officials said 580,000 sorties are flown in West German airspace each year.

The bottlenecks in the air cause delays for aircraft queued for takeoff or stacked in the air awaiting permission to land.

“In Munich our planes can’t get up and in Frankfurt they can’t get down,” Lufthansa chairman Heinz Ruhnau said.

“The biggest problems for 1988 will be presented by the capacity bottlenecks at airports, in airspace and on the ground,” he told Lufthansa’s annual news conference.

Vogler said delays had cost Lufthansa the equivalent of $27.5 million in 1987. In the first quarter of this year, the bill is already $13.7 million and the rate of delay seems set to rise above 1987 levels.

The Transport Ministry has proposed increasing the funds it plans to invest in air safety and traffic control between 1988 and 1992 to $400 million from $285 million. It also pledged a study of airline traffic and air traffic control technology.

“The infrastructure of the airports and the air traffic control system have reached the limit of their capabilities,” the ministry said. “The infrastructure cannot be expanded in the short-term so the problems in air traffic will increase.”

“Our proposals will contribute to improving the situation,” a spokesman added. “This doesn’t mean there won’t be any delays this summer.”

This is bad news for the holiday-hungry West Germans, world leaders in foreign travel, according to official statistics.

The Federal Office for Air Safety, which supervises the air traffic control system, said international traffic over West Germany rose to 1.2 million planes last year, nearly 15% more than in 1986.