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Berlin (dpa) - Only a tenth of the usual number of passengers checks in at German airports.

In November there were still 1.69 million passengers at the 21 airports.

That was hardly more than an airport like Hamburg could manage on its own every month before the crisis.

The industry association ADV of the German Press Agency announced that there was no increase in traffic at Christmas either.

«Only trips that are absolutely necessary are taken.

Private, tourist and business trips hardly take place. "

In the period from January to November, the number of passengers was almost three quarters below the previous year's figure of around 61 million.

After the collapse of air traffic in the first Corona wave in March and April, the number of passengers had risen to just under a quarter of the 2019 figures by August.

Since then it has been going down again.

In November the minus was a good 90 percent.

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"The picture at Germany's airports is still bleak, the traffic volume is stuck in lockdown," said Ralph Beisel, the chief executive of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Verkehrsflughäfen (ADV).

"The airports work far from any economic efficiency."

Nevertheless, they kept the company running as part of the general interest.

They are therefore dependent on government grants.

Dortmund Airport was the best in November, where the drop in passengers was almost 78 percent.

At the largest German airport in Frankfurt it was minus 87 percent.

The crisis is affecting smaller airports even more: In Paderborn just 414 passengers were counted, in Erfurt 114. Nobody flew in Saarbrücken.

But there is a growth trend: for the third month in a row, more cargo was flown.

Over the course of the year, the cargo volume was around 4.2 million tons, only 5.7 percent below the previous year's figure.

There were four times as many flights from cargo planes as from passenger planes.

"This growth trend carries the hope of being a leading indicator for a recovering economy again," said the association.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201218-99-737908 / 2