AARHUS, Denmark—Hannover Airport (HAJ) has made significant strides in expanding traffic to major hubs and expects passenger growth to be more than 15% during 2024, according to the gateway's head of business development, Peer Zeise.
Speaking at Routes Europe 2024, Zeise said the airport has seen good increases in the number of flights to cities like Amsterdam, London, Paris and Zurich, as well as domestic connections to Frankfurt and Munich.
“These hubs are extremely important for the big corporates in our catchment area due to their North America, Asian and African connectivity,” Zeise told Routes.
One of the notable successes highlighted by Zeise was the expansion of Austrian Airlines' services, including the introduction of a night stop at HAJ and an increase in frequencies to 4X-daily flights from April.
From a leisure perspective, TUIfly has based a fifth aircraft in Hannover, offering three new destinations, while the airport has been successful in securing additional service to Italy.
Italy has emerged as a key target market for HAJ, with incentives in place to stimulate new routes. Eurowings, attracted by these incentives, is basing two aircraft at the airport and is this summer operating flights to destinations such as Milan Bergamo, Naples and Rome Fiumicino.
Although Germany’s aviation market has recovered from the pandemic at a slower pace than the European average, Zeise said that HAJ expects growth of more than 15% in 2024, which will “lay the next steps” for further expansion. “In this context, Hannover will be a growth driver and significantly expand its importance,” he added.
“Hannover is not a niche market, but offers unique location factors to open up a large and profitable market without overwhelming competition. We are often seen as a growth option when other connections to Germany are already working well—but that doesn't do the location justice.
“Our task will therefore be to clearly position the bottleneck-free opportunities in the Hannover market with 24/7 operation.”
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