After six and a half intensive weeks at Cologne Bonn Airport, the biggest travel wave of the year is only slowly ebbing away. With school back in session after the summer vacations in North Rhine-Westphalia, Cologne Bonn Airport is drawing a positive balance. A total of 1.7 million passengers took off or landed at the airport. The peak day was the first Sunday in August (4.8.) with around 43,000 travelers. Over the entire last vacation weekend, Cologne/Bonn counted just under 120,000 passengers from Friday to Sunday (16-18 August).
“The summer vacations always mean very full terminals and particularly challenging weeks. My special thanks go to all our employees and our partners for their commitment and their great work,” says Thilo Schmid, CEO of Flughafen Köln/Bonn GmbH. “We are also expecting a high volume of passengers in the coming weeks, which will continue into the fall. In September and October, we are again expecting more than one million passengers,” says Schmid.
The desire to travel to seaside resorts and sunny destinations in Europe in particular remained unbroken during this year's summer vacations, especially among families with children. The most popular vacation destination was Turkey with around 500,000 passengers, followed by Spain (more than 360,000 passengers) and Italy (around 141,000 passengers). The most popular destination for passengers was Antalya with around 230,000 travelers. In second and third place were Palma de Mallorca (191,000 passengers) and Istanbul (around 122,000 passengers).
Air travelers will also have good connections in the coming months. The airline Marabu is opening its new base at the airport just in time for the start of the fall vacations and will be flying regularly from the Rhineland to popular sun destinations in the Canary Islands and Egypt. In the winter flight schedule following the fall vacations, Eurowings will be offering new direct flights to exciting destinations: From October 28, there will be three flights a week from Cologne/Bonn to Dubai, the capital of the emirate of the same name on the Persian Gulf. From November 5, Eurowings will also be operating three non-stop flights a week to the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah on the Red Sea.
