FRANKFURT, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Frankfurt Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world, registered a 13-percent year-on-year growth of passengers in August, but the figure remains 15.3 percent below the level in August 2019 before the pandemic, the airport said on Wednesday.
The school vacations in the state of Hesse, where the airport is located, contributed to the increase in passengers as people flocked to popular holiday destinations. Passenger numbers on flights to such destinations as the Turkish Mediterranean coast, Greece, the Canary Islands, Tunisia, Kenya, Cape Verde and Mauritius even exceeded the 2019 levels, the airport said in a statement.
It also reported a slight increase in cargo volumes, up by 1.2 percent year-on-year, totaling 156,827 tons.
Last year, Germany's most important trading partner China accounted for 26 percent of Germany's air freight traded with countries outside the European Union, according to the German Aviation Association (BDL). A total of 552,000 tons of goods were transported between the two countries by plane.
"In German foreign trade in general, China plays the biggest role in the transport of goods by air to and from Germany," a BDL spokesperson told Xinhua on Wednesday, adding that particularly in the category of electrical and electronic equipment, China "ranked No. 1 by a wide margin."
Frankfurt Airport has maintained its position as the largest cargo airport in Europe, with 899,000 tons of airfreight goods loaded and unloaded in the first half of the year, according to the BDL. ■
