Fewer flights from Leipzig/Halle and Dresden in winter

The number of flights at Central German airports is falling significantly this winter. There will be 17 percent fewer departures from Leipzig/Halle in the season from October 26 to March 28 compared to the previous year, according to Uwe Schuhart, Group spokesman for Mitteldeutsche Flughafen AG. This means that WizzAir connections to Tirana and Bucharest, for example, will be canceled in the winter flight schedule. The "Leipziger Volkszeitung" and "Sächsische Zeitung" newspapers had previously reported on this.

Lufthansa with the largest offer

Lufthansa continues to have the largest offer with 675 departures, followed by Marabu Airlines with 474 departures. There are flights to 14 destinations in 8 countries from Leipzig/Halle, but not all of them throughout the season. In addition to the transfer airports of Frankfurt, Vienna and Istanbul, the focus is on vacation destinations such as Antalya, the Canary Islands and Egypt. As in the summer, there will no longer be a daily connection to Munich.

At Dresden Airport, the decline is less pronounced at 8 percent. Lufthansa offers the lion's share of flight connections with more than 1,000 departures, followed by its subsidiary Eurowings with 132 departures. There are flights from the Saxon state capital to 10 destinations in 7 countries. The direct connection to Fuerteventura will be discontinued in winter, and passengers will only be able to fly to Tenerife until the end of November. New to the offer, however, is a connection from SkyAlps to Bolzano in South Tyrol.

Debate about route cancellations

The head of Mitteldeutsche Flughafen AG, Götz Ahmelmann, expressed his alarm at the beginning of the week about possible route cancellations at Lufthansa. When Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr warned that routes such as Dresden - Munich would be put to the test due to high location costs in Germany, this was a clear signal, Ahmelmann wrote in a LinkedIn post. Together with the Saxon state government, Flughafen AG is doing everything "to keep Dresden connected".

At the end of September, representatives from business, science and politics had already approached Spohr. They pointed out the importance of the connection for business and science to the international hubs in Munich and Frankfurt.