Greater ambitions
Airfreight performance in Austria, Munich, Budapest and Zurich. The last few years have awakened the ambitions of Vienna airport, smaller hubs in Austria, or neighbouring gateways of comparable size to make a bigger mark in the airfreight sector. ITJ correspondent Josef Müller went in search of them.
Competition is getting ever tougher – and Austrian airports are also feeling the pinch. Vienna (VIE), Linz (LNZ), Salzburg (SZG) and Graz (GRZ) airports all handle airfreight, and all of these locations recorded declining volumes last year. By comparison, freight took off – literally – at the competing airports in Zurich, Munich as well as at the hub in Budapest.
Vienna Schwechat, Austria’s largest airport, handled more than 251,000 t of cargo in last year, or 4% less compared with 2021. Airfreight at Linz Hörsching airport was also on the decline, compared to the previous year. It recorded slightly more than 55,000 t of cargo, a drop of almost 11% that was quite substantial.
LNZ has built up a strong market position in recent years and remains the leading provincial airport in Austria. It is also the only airport in the country where animals can be handled.
What is more, it benefits greatly from substantial maindeck capacities operated by DHL Express and Turkish Cargo, but also from the strong economic environment in Upper Austria.
Second fiddle in Graz and Salzburg
At Graz Thalerhof airport, airfreight saw a contraction of 14% last year, coming in at just over 17,000 t, which was a sobering operating result – particularly as 2021 was still a genuine boom year, as the airport’s spokeswoman Doris Poelt pointed out. No fewer than 30 full-freighter aircraft landed at GRZ then, and brought a large volume of urgent medical equipment to the province of Styria as a result of the outbreak of Covid-19.
The gateway is currently served five times a week by RFS options on the Vienna–Graz–Ljubljana–Graz–Vienna route. This solution was launched at the beginning of March, and will also connect to Zagreb (Croatia) in the future. Earlier this year the hub also created the new ‘cargo business development’ position, whose aim is to promote connections between the ground handler Swissport Cargo Services, the airport operating company and the transport industry.
SZG is Austria’s smallest airport in terms of airfreight; 9,900 t of freight were handled there last year. That was only 2% less than in 2021, but this didn’t cause airport spokesman Alexander Klaus sleepless nights – because “our main focus isn’t on freight, and so we’re satisfied with the current performance.”
Competitors on the doorstep
Austria’s airports face strong competition in the airfreight sector from Munich (MUC), Budapest (BUD) and Zurich (ZRH) airports. BUD has demonstrated its powerful profile in becoming an airfreight hub for Eastern Europe.
A total of 194,000 t of freight was hand-
led at the location in 2022, a figure that was almost 6% higher than that recorded for 2021 and 42% more than in the pre-pandemic year of 2019. “With this result we managed to break all of our previous records,” as the airport spokesman József Kossuth told the ITJ.
BUD benefits from operations of the Chinese internet giant Alibaba, which has chosen the Hungarian capital as its second European hub, after Belgium’s Liège, and flies in many thousands of parcels every month. What’s more, there’s the good overall economic performance in the country, with its buoyant vehicle industry.
The hub’s Cargo City (see page 15 of ITJ 49-52 / 2019) is being further expanded to promote growth. 6,500 m2 of surface area in halls is being rolled out, as well as 1,500 m2 of additional office facilities, along with a centre for handling live animals. BUD has targeted a capacity of 300,000 t a year.
Airfreight also took off at Germany’s MUC airport last year, coming in at a remarkable 259,000 t (+55%). The additional volume came from new airlines, such as Eva Air from Taiwan. DHL Express is currently also expanding at the location, investing EUR 100 million in a new cargo project at this site.
ZRH was also on the upswing, handling 422,000 t of airfreight, 7% more than in the year before. “ZRH isn’t a typical cargo airport, because we have one of the strictest night-flight bans here compared to similar airports in Europe,” as Bettina Kunz, the spokeswoman for Flughafen Zürich AG, clarified.