Ryanair nearly as big as Eurowings at Cologne Bonn; airport’s 2 longest routes are new

Cologne Bonn welcomed nearly 9.8 million passengers in 2023, making it Germany’s fifth-busiest airport. Traffic was down by over a fifth compared to before the pandemic in 2019, virtually fully because of the much smaller domestic market.

Cologne Bonn’s recovery benefited from the arrival of multiple carriers, including Aegean (2022), Air Anka (2024), Air Cairo (2021), Air Serbia (2022), Condor (2024), Freebird (2022), Leav Aviation (2023), Nile Air (2023) and Smartwings (2023).

The exit of various airlines did not help, including Alitalia (2020; defunct), Blue Air (2022; defunct), easyJet (2022), Onur Air (2020; defunct), Pobeda (2022; due to the war), Sundair (2021), S7 Airlines (2022; due to the war) and TAP Air Portugal (2019).

Ryanair closes the gap significantly on leading carrier Eurowings

According to Cirium schedules information, Ryanair has served Cologne Bonn since 2012. In W24, it has 575,000 one-way seats, only slightly less than the leading carrier, Eurowings.

While Ryanair’s capacity has risen by 8% compared to W19, Eurowings is down by 40%. Eurowings’s drop is mainly because of substantial cuts to the domestic market (-68%).

Eurowings now has 33% of Cologne Bonn’s seats, down by eight percentage points, and Ryanair has 32%. Cologne Bonn is now Ryanair’s second most-served German airport, while it is fourth for Eurowings.

Based on having at least 500 one-way seats, Cirium shows that Eurowings has 38 Cologne Bonn routes in W24, with Berlin being the most served destination. Two routes started recently: Jeddah (5 November 2024; 3-weekly) and Dubai Al Maktoum (28 October 2024; 3-weekly). They are Cologne Bonn’s top two routes by distance. In contrast, Ryanair has 29 links, with London STN being the number one.

Istanbul SAW is the leading market

Cirium shows that it is one of 69 destinations with 500+ one-way seats in W24. In addition to Jeddah and Dubai, they include Cairo. Air Cairo began flights from its namesake city on October 27 (2-weekly), joining Nile Air (2-weekly).

SAW, on the Asian side of the vast city, is Cologne Bonn’s top destination by capacity. It has 37-weekly flights in the first week of December by Pegasus (25) and Ajet (formerly AnadoluJet; 12).

When added to IST, Istanbul has 220,000 one-way seats, smashing London’s total of 182,000. There are 51-weekly Istanbul flights (in addition to Pegasus and AJet, there is Turkish Airlines to IST; 14-weekly).

Despite Istanbul’s dominance, Turkey is Cologne Bonn’s second most-served country in W24 after Spain. Ten Spanish airports are served.

The domestic market has fallen to third place

Germany is now Cologne Bonn’s third-largest country market, with regular flights to Berlin (Eurowings), Hamburg (Eurowings) and Munich.

There are 272,000 one-way seats, compared to 809,000 five years ago, when it comfortably ranked number one with three times more seats than Spain. Then, Berlin TXL (easyJet, Eurowings), Dresden (Eurowings), Hamburg (Eurowings), Leipzig (Eurowings), and Munich (Eurowings, Lufthansa) had Cologne Bonn flights.