Not every take-off, every landing is on the BER flight plan. Because nobody can get on or off anyway. There were 3316 so-called positioning flights in the past two Corona years at the capital’s airport BER (partly Tegel).
This means that planes that were not fully utilized were used elsewhere, there were workshop flights, but also empty flights. Because in order to secure your own take-off and landing rights (slots), an EU rule requires a minimum usage of 80 percent.
“It is really dramatic that the companies have to do empty flights due to a lack of passengers,” says FDP traffic expert Felix Reifschneider (43). The BER operators do not know exactly why an airline flies, but for the Senate “such empty flights represent an avoidable heavy environmental and climate impact”.
Finance State Secretary Barbro Dreher (64): “We see the European Commission as having an obligation to adjust the prescribed minimum use of slots so that airlines no longer have any incentives to carry out empty flights that could be avoided due to the pandemic.”
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At least from the end of March to the end of October, the minimum utilization will be reduced to 64 percent.