A good two and a half months after the sale of the insolvent Hunsrück Airport Hahn, the buyers have not yet applied for a permit for flight operations.

The State Office for Mobility (LBM) Rhineland-Palatinate, as the aviation and air security authority, informed the German Press Agency that it has not received any inquiries so far.

Hahn Airport went bankrupt in October 2021 and was sold to Swift Conjoy GmbH in Frankfurt at the end of June 2022 for an undisclosed sum.

The state of Hesse still holds a minority stake of 17.5 percent.

Swift Conjoy GmbH did not comment on request for the time being.

The spokesman for the insolvency administrator Jan Markus Plathner explained: "The purchase will only be completed after the approval has been granted." Usually, the money only flows after such a purchase contract has become effective.

"Step by step"

The deputy chairman of the Hahn works council, Karl-Heinz Heinrich, said he was not concerned: "These are official matters.

There can only be one step at a time.” Several authorities are involved in the approval of flight operations.

The airport with its current boss Rüdiger Franke is on the upswing again after the corona situation has eased, said Heinrich.

"The development is very positive." This was also shown by the numerous job advertisements at the insolvent airport, which currently has around 400 employees.

The badly hit Chinese conglomerate HNA sold its 82.5 percent stake in Hahn.

205.5 percent more passengers

The managing directors of Swift Conjoy GmbH, Tobias Steyer and Martin Mansell, had already spoken to the works council at the airport, added Heinrich, who works for the airport fire department.

The buyers only wanted to inform the public in more detail about their plans once the purchase agreement had become effective.

At the end of June they had promised new investments and additional jobs.

The spokesman for the insolvency administrator spoke of a very pleasing passenger business: “So far this year we have welcomed around three times as many travelers as in the previous year 2021. We are correspondingly optimistic about the autumn and Christmas holidays.

We are currently assuming that the positive trend will continue in the 2022/23 winter flight schedule.”

According to the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Verkehrsflughäfen (ADV), Hahn Airport booked 722,638 passengers from January to July 2022 - 205.5 percent more than in the same period last year.

The freight business, on the other hand, fell by 18.9 percent to 129,041 tons.

The spokesman for the insolvency administrator also explained this with the ongoing corona lockdown in some economic regions of China.

This “has an impact on air freight traffic worldwide”.