Press release No. N037 of 4 June 2021
• Despite corona: short-haul flights accounted for 53%, roughly the same level as in the pre-crisis year of 2019 (54%)
• Just under three quarters of all short-haul flights (distance of up to 1,000 kilometres) were international flights
• One in seven flights were domestic flights in 2020; this proportion remained unchanged from 2019
WIESBADEN - Currently, there is a debate about limiting the number of short-distance flights and flights within Germany. Short-haul flights, defined here as flights covering a distance of up to 1,000 kilometres, accounted for 53%, or 313,000, of all passenger flights which departed from, or arrived at, major German airports in 2020. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that, despite the huge drop in passenger numbers due to the corona crisis, this proportion was almost as high as before the pandemic. In 2019, just over half (54%) of all passenger flights also were short-haul flights. When considering these figures it is important to bear in mind that air travel was hit by an unprecedented fall in the corona year of 2020. There were about 596,000 passenger flights in Germany in that year, which was a decrease of roughly 66% from before the pandemic (2019: 1.74 million flights).
