WIESBADEN (dpa-AFX) - In terms of the number of flights and passengers, domestic air traffic in Germany has become less important since 2019. According to the Federal Statistical Office on Thursday, a good fifth (20.6 percent) of the approximately 715,500 flights from January to October 2023 departed from one of Germany's main airports to a domestic destination. At the same time, 11.4 percent of the 84.3 million passengers who took off during this period were traveling within Germany. The picture was similar in the same period last year.

In the pre-coronavirus period in 2019, 26.7% of all around 942,100 flights departing from Germany were domestic flights. The difference in passenger numbers was even more pronounced: From January to October 2019, 18.3 percent of the 107.2 million passengers who took off were traveling to destinations within the country.

At the same time, the importance of domestic German flights as feeder flights to destinations abroad is growing, according to the figures. In the first ten months of last year, 28.2% of passengers traveled on to another country after a domestic flight. In the same period in 2019, the proportion was still 17.0 percent./mar/DP/nas