The collapse of the German efficiency myth: Frankfurt is Europe's worst hub for flight punctuality

2023 was an 'annus horribilis' for two of Europe's major hubs, where millions of travelers stop over each year. Frankfurt and Munich, the two 'houses' of Lufthansa. have been among the worst, among large European airports, In terms of the timeliness of operations, that is, of outgoing and incoming flights.

A situation that closely affects Italian passengers for at least two reasons: Munich and Frankfurt have connections from a dozen cities in our country; and Lufthansa's imminent entry into ITA Airways will likely cause the two airports to be used by domestic passengers as stopovers to other European airports or on other continents to an even greater extent than has been the case to date.

Of the two, The one that fared significantly worse, in terms of On Time Performance (OTP), was Frankfurt where, according to The data collected by the specialized agency OAG, between January and November last year only 42.6% of flights took off and landed on time.

Comparison with the performance of the other three major European hubs (London Heathrow, Paris Charles De Gaulle and Amsterdam Schipol) is merciless: the Frankfurt OTP is 8 percentage points below that of Charles De Gaulle (54.5%), 18 points below that of Heathrow (60.5%), and 18.5 points below that of Schipol (61%).

If you then broaden your gaze a little bit, Germany's main airport 'gets' 24 points from Istanbul (which recorded a punctuality index of 66.1%) and 28 points from Rome Fiumicino (where 70.5% of flights took off and landed on time between January and November 2023).

Looking in detail at Frankfurt's performance, is between July and October that in those parts embarking or disembarking on time was a real exception: In July, the index related to OTP was 37.1% , in August by 14.9%, in September by 19.3% and in October by 23.6%. In November (last month available on oag.com) it rose to a still modest 38.3%.

The collapse of the myth of German efficiency also affected Munich, which in the first eleven months of 2023 recorded An average OTP of 52.9% (still 10 percentage points above that of Frankfurt). Going into detail on monthly performance, Even in Bavaria, the black period coincided with the summer and fall seasons: In July, in fact, the percentage of on-time flights slipped to 43.7% from 60.0% in June, to plummet to 20.7% in August, 24.78% in September, and 26.2% in October, before rising again to 47.3% in November.

Looking at Lufthansa Group's other hubs., bad also went in Brussels ('home' of Brussels Airlines), where only 44.8% of the flights operated on time; better (but not as one would expect from the proverbial Swiss punctuality) in Zurich (Swiss's hub) where the 56.7% of flights took off and landed on-time.

The best by far was Vienna, which with a OTP of 74.1% has been at the top among European hubs overall. The 'problem' is that while Austrian Airlines offers from 'its' airport a good range of destinations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, when one goes to see the long-haul network the choice is limited to no more than a dozen cities scattered across North America and the Far East.