Düsseldorf Airport seeks new long haul route opportunities with the A321XLR in mind

German air transport growth is presently hampered by aviation taxes, charges, security levies, ATC bills and environmentally oriented restrictions on fossil-produced fuels - it has fallen well behind other European countries in that respect.

One example is Düsseldorf Airport, Germany's fourth busiest, which was 5.5 million passengers down on its 2019 passenger total in 2024.

While CAPA - Centre for Aviation data suggests that German carriers have not deserted the airport, nor is long haul seat capacity actually down either since 2019, its management is hopeful that the long range and highly economic Airbus A321XLR aircraft will provide the catalyst towards generating pre-pandemic levels of passenger traffic once again and kick-start long haul capacity growth.

The target must be Lufthansa, its subsidiaries and other leading German airlines like Condor. The Lufthansa Group, in particular, is represented very thinly at the airport - indeed, at the sort of level associated with British Airways at UK regional airports, virtually invisible.

The problem is that none of those airlines seems to have placed an order for the Airbus A321XLR yet.

So the secondary target is foreign airlines.

But that requires a concentrated, focused marketing effort, not only by the airport, but by the city and the huge Rhine-Ruhr area, which is one of the most economically significant areas in Europe; never mind Germany, but that somehow seems to pass under the radar.