Bremen Airport recorded a passenger increase of 9.7 percent in the first quarter of 2018 to 492,000, helped by capacity and frequency expansions from existing airlines. Routesonline spoke to chief commercial officer Florian Kruse about the airport’s network priotities for 2018.

What is new in summer 2018 at Bremen Airport?

The summer schedule is dominated by the increase of frequencies to several destinations. Munich and Frankfurt are now served six times per day by Lufthansa, offering even more possible connecting flights from both airports.

Eurowings boosts the number of flights to Stuttgart from four to five on Monday and from three to four from Tuesday to Friday. This enables companies like Mercedes-Benz to plan business trips more time-efficient and furthermore increase the number of possible connecting flights in Stuttgart.

Turkish Airlines has added four more weekly flights to Istanbul, now serving the destination twice a day and operating bigger aircraft on some rotations.

Germania increases its capacities to Antalya this summer with a higher frequency and bigger aircraft, as the demand for leisure flights to Turkey has been growing in the last months.

Ryanair has upgraded its route to London this summer from seven to 12 weekly flights and will launch a new service to Zadar/Croatia in July.

Are there any particular geographies you are targeting?

We are interested in the Eastern European market, as Bremen and its catchment area are home to a large number of people from this region. Beside the ethnic travel potential, Eastern Europe is a very important market for Bremen-based companies and direct flights are crucial, especially when there are strong trade relations, for example in the maritime and logistics industry.

Apart from Eastern Europe, we are striving for an expansion in the Nordics. The routes to Reykjavik, Stockholm and Tampere are running very well and underline the high demand for direct flights to this region. Thus, we would like to expand our route portfolio to this region.

Furthermore, Italy and the UK are in focus, as both regions are currently underserved.

You have a mix of LCCs, FSCs and charter carriers– is it your policy to continue to focus on attracting more routes from all of these airlines?

The three pillars of our traffic are full-service, low-cost and charter carriers. All of them are equally important in order to cover the demand of these segments. Overall, we offer our passengers 20 daily departures to our hubs Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, Paris and Istanbul.

On the other hand, the low-cost and leisure markets are very important segments, too. Especially Germania, Bremen’s biggest leisure carrier in terms of passenger numbers and destinations, shows how a steady and sustainable growth can look like. The airline will be growing in winter 2018/19 and base an additional aircraft in Bremen, followed by another one in summer 2019.

Is there anything else you would like to tell our readers?

A major topic is the continuous modernisation of our facilities. After introducing the new centralised security check point and a modernized gate are with new shops and eateries last year, we are currently planning to open a supermarket and an Italian take-away in the arrival hall this year.

We are also working on digitalisation, new parking products and will start a cooperation with AirPlus soon. These measures guarantee that Bremen Airport will stay up-to-date and add value to our passenger’s experience.