LH may ground freighters.

[ptbodale]

Lufthansa may drop cargo fleet if night flight ban.

Lufthansa could give up its fleet of cargo planes if night flights were banned at its main hub in Frankfurt, Lufthansa Cargo chief executive Carsten Spohr said. "Everything that goes toward a single-digit number (of flights allowed per night) would mean that it no longer pays off to have our own cargo fleet," he said.

His comments come after months of talks about whether night flights should be banned at
Frankfurt airport, Germany's largest, to limit noise pollution after the airport adds another
runway in 2011. The German state of Hesse, home to Frankfurt, approved in 2007 plans to expand the airport, but one condition was that flight movements were limited to an average of 17 per night between 11 pm and 5 am to cut down on noise.

Lufthansa said when court proceedings began in June it alone would require an average of 23 flights a night by 2020 for passenger and cargo flights. Requirements by tour operators such as Thomas Cook's Condor would come on top of that. (Source: Reuters)

[LH-B744]

Germany is densely populated, and Hessen is no exception to that. But Rhein/Main is an area that maybe can't be compared with Rhein/Ruhr.
Rhein/Main (subjective again) consists of Frankfurt/Main, Wiesbaden and Mainz and the neighbour cities. So maybe 2 million persons who really can say that EDDF is their home airport, because they are closely connected to it (by train, by car).

That is different to Rhein/Ruhr. The EDDL airport is the only interconti airport that is near to my home (1 hour by car, incl. traffic jam and lookin for a parkin slot.. ....): nonstop to Chicago, nonstop to Toronto. But maybe 18 million persons (not only 2 million..) who live in NRW enjoy the fact that they dont have to drive to EDDF for every single flight.

Is EDDF able to take another 20 million passengers (from EDDL), if EDDF and EDDL can't be expanded? Not to forget EDDK, which would be another 10 million...
I think some people who really live next to an interconti airport (0-10 miles away from the end of the runways) forget that they have an advantage... They e.g. dont have to hang around in crowded trains, and they don't have to upset because they again are in another traffic jam on the highway A3 or A52 (assumed that they like to travel a bit)!

If I don't want to use that advantage, why wouldnt I search a place to live that is not immediatly next to an intercontinental airport?

[ihatemondays]

The weird thing is that people are so stupid around here! I live near EDDF, and you find lots of idiots willing to settle on cheap ground (due to noise) but complain afterwards...

[AA 1818]

So, the plan would be to shift cargo operations/cargo carrying to undercarriages on their passenger flights?
What would be the impact of loosing the company/entity completely?
How likely is it that the State Government of Hesse will compromise with LH?
As a matter of fact, hasn't LH grounded most of their cargo fleet (MD-11s) recently anyway, citing economic reasons?
With LH and DHL Express forming Aerologic, will that not further push LH to invest in Aerologic over LH Cargo?
In the event that Aerologic is expanded at the expense of LH cargo, how difficult (logistically) would it be to trasnport goods from Leipzig to Frankfurt?

[DAL767-400ER]

How likely is it that the State Government of Hesse will compromise with LH?

It's not up to Hesse to decide, it's up to the courts. I mean, realistically speaking, if the decisions made by Hesse with regards to the airport were always the final decision, construction of the 4th runway would have started at least 3 years ago already and the limit of nightly movements would have been increased to 50+ movements. But alas, it is unfortunately the courts that have the final say because some NIMBY and treehuggers moan and b!tch about everything.

As a matter of fact, hasn't LH grounded most of their cargo fleet (MD-11s) recently anyway, citing economic reasons?

Only 3 of them. They initially planned to ground 4, but demand was "good enough" that they only ended up grounding 3.

[LH-B744]

The topic is freighters at EDDF, sorry, my fault . That is only a little different from passengers at EDDF. Trucks need to come to EDDF, delivery has to be managed and cars/passengers come to EDDF respectively. Both want to use the highways, the highways have to be expanded etc etc etc...
But how far can we go? I have in mind 8- or 10-lane highways where still traffic jams occur (no fiction). And I really don't want to imagine 8- or 10-lane highways that go through the centres of Frankfurt, Berlin or Dortmund.
So why can't we have a lot of more regional trains and airport buses that connect an intercontinental airport to all the people who live 50 or 150 km away from it?
I think a distance "passenger to airport" of 50 or 150 km (up to 100 miles) is very easy to cover for an intercontinental airport like EDDL. I even heard of Belgians who come to EDDL (by car of course, due to the missing train link Belgium - EDDL).

More regional trains maybe can solve another issue: no car driver ever wants to sit in crowded trains just to arrive at work (the same with trying park & ride to avoid traffic jams...).