Hannover-Langenhagen Airport is an airport located approximately 11 kilometers north of Hannover, Lower Saxony, near the town of Langenhagen. It is the 9th-largest airport in Germany. In 2017, it handled 5.8 million passengers.
Hanover Airport is an airport with no restrictions on night flights. During the day, it operates at less than 20% capacity. The reason for this is probably that the catchment area is not attractive enough from the airlines’ point of view. However, as there are no night flight restrictions, some airlines take advantage of this opportunity and offer inexpensive night flights. At night, i.e. from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., over 90% of flights are tourist flights. Of these 90% of tourist flights, 90% are operated by low-cost airlines to Turkey. Approximately 150,000 people in the Hanover region are affected by night flights.
Our citizens’ initiative Fluglärmschutzkommission Han-Lan is committed to protecting nighttime peace and is taking action against night flights. We have succeeded in having a new expert report on the dangers of night flights drawn up. Unfortunately, in our view, the report produced a poor result, as the expert only used outdated old values. It is an expert who is repeatedly asked by the aviation industry and who repeatedly underestimates the damage caused by noise. We are fighting this report at the political level. If that is not enough, we will take legal action against it.
The state of Lower Saxony and the city of Hanover own two-thirds of the airport. They want to keep the airport, but recognize that airlines have no interest in using it during the day. At the same time, they want the airport to be as economically viable as possible. That is why they see night flights as an opportunity. In the first step hey use expert reports to deny the health risks. Secondly they proof economic viability by using flawed methods. These pseudo-scientific findings are presented time and time again. We are fighting these false assumptions about economic viability.
In 2026, the Lower Saxony state parliament will decide whether night flights can continue in their current form. We will do everything in our power to bring about the phasing out of night flights.
Photo: Ralf Claus