With around 122.6 million passengers in 2018, more people than ever before departed from Germany's 24 largest commercial airports, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Thursday.
On the occasion of the ITB Berlin travel trade show, Destatis said that this figure represents an increase of 4.2 percent over the previous year and equates to almost 336,000 passengers per day departing from German airports in 2018.
"Never before have so many people traveled by plane as last year, despite the insolvencies of airlines, such as Air berlin and Germania. This brings large airports to the limits of their capacity," Klaus-Heiner Roehl, senior economist at the German Economic Institute (IW), said on Thursday.
The number of passengers carried by international flights from Germany increased by 5.5 percent to 99 million. The number of domestic air passengers, on the other hand, declined slightly by 0.8 percent to 23.5 million.
A total of 77.8 million passengers flew to European countries from German airports, with Spain continuing to be the most popular destination in 2018 (14.7 million passengers), followed by the United Kingdom (7.5 million) and Turkey (almost 7.5 million, and the largest yearly increase of 20.1 percent).
Intercontinental flights carried 21.3 million passengers from German airports, an increase of 3.2 percent over the previous year. "Air traffic to Africa again experienced a boom with an increase of 24.8 percent to 4 million passengers," according to Destatis. Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia were particularly attractive flight destinations in 2018.
According to a recent study conducted by the BAT Foundation for Future Studies, 62 percent of German citizens traveled in 2018, more than ever before. Spain and Italy were the most popular destinations for Germans, followed by Austria, Turkey and Scandinavia.
"There are still many indicators for a high level of travel intensity in 2019. Whether it will reach the 2018 level, however, remains to be seen," said Ulrich Reinhardt, scientific director of the BAT Foundation. After all, almost one in two Germans is already certain that they will travel in 2019, Reinhardt added.