Why Düsseldorf Airport – a logical choice – was never Germany’s hub airport and maybe never will be

At the Apr-2026 CAPA Airline Leader Summit - Airlines in Transition conference the CEO of Germany's fourth largest air carrier, Condor, made a telling point about Düsseldorf Airport, which serves the Rhine-Ruhr region, the biggest industrial area of Germany and one that has the largest population, almost twice that of Berlin.

He pointed out that despite these attributes Düsseldorf could not have been Germany's main hub. That accolade went instead to Frankfurt, into which heavy post-war infrastructure investment was made as West Germany adapted to its new status and later it was adopted as Lufthansa's main hub, despite the carrier being headquartered at Cologne, mainly on account of that investment and its central location.

But London is not central to the UK and neither is Paris to France. Other factors have come into play which are considered in this report and one of the main ones is that restrictive operational decisions taken by Düsseldorf's management over 45 years ago continue to impact on its ability to act as a hub today.

And latterly those decisions have been compounded by others made at a national level which have conspired to make Germany one of Europe's least welcoming locations for airlines.