One of my favorite regional topics is the Kassel Airport.
Back twenty years ago...it was a no-name small airport about two hours north of Frankfurt and used mostly by the locals. For those who've never been to Kassel, it's a terrific place for a weekend visit and loaded with history and culture. Prior to WW II...it was a major city in Germany and had tons of technology-laden companies in the local area. All of this led to Allied bombing in WW II, and a lot of destruction. History would show a large metropolitan area existing there today....had the war not occurred.
Back around twelve years ago, the local political folks convinced Hessen political folks into renovating the local airport. Roughly 270-million Euro was poured in.
What they ended up with (I've been there and walked through the airport itself) is a great renovated runway (8,200 ft long)....a first-rate fire-department building....and a Airport complex (basically two gates). Plenty of open parking....all free.
It was built in a way for vacation travelers. You could easily imagine three or four flights per day in the spring and summer leaving out of the airport. It was near the autobahn, so that made another positive.
The negative? Well....Kassel is in the middle of nowhere. Toward the west (an hour away), there's at least three significant airports already there and operating. To the south is Fulda. Hanover and Leipzig? They already had airports as well.
They built a white-paper-type airport....waiting for business to discover how to use it. The problem is....the EU has this rule about how state funding can be used to sustain an airport, and they were given a warning that it had to start turning a profit, or be sold.
No one says much over the idea of selling the airport. To be honest, after the Hahn episode....there just isn't much of a market shown for airports in Germany.
So HR did a report and chatted about the efforts to keep the airport up and running.
This year? The airport moved 70,000 passengers....which is a pretty lousy number and won't sustain the operating cost.
For 2018? Well....they are suggesting 540,000 passengers. It's mostly due to some vacation networks and summer tour-packages being arranged. If they did reach 540,000....it would probably help to keep the airport in operation. How they they arrived at the 540,000....well....it's simply talks with the industry and a guess.
It's an interesting white-paper-design. You could get into your car and drive 90 minutes....pull into a paved parking lot....walk less than ten minutes...and enter an airport with marginal problems. Seven days later, return to the same airport, grab your bag, and be in the car and on the autobahn in fifteen minutes. But you need the vacation package folks to grasp this ease and simple design. So far, they've gone to established airports.
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