Hof-Plauen airfield

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Hof-Plauen airfield
Hof-Plauen Airport Logo.svg
Airport Hof HOQ.JPG
Characteristics
ICAO code EDQM
IATA code HOQ
Coordinates

50 ° 17 '24 "  N , 11 ° 51' 23"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 17 '24 "  N , 11 ° 51' 23"  E

Height above MSL 597 m (1959  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center 5 km southwest of Hof (Saale)
Street 10 min
Local transport Regional bus line 1 ,

10 min (taxi)

Basic data
opening 1968
operator Hof-Plauen Airport GmbH & Co. KG
Terminals 1
Passengers 4120 ( 2014 )
Flight
movements
7225 ( 2014 )
Employees 50
Start-and runway
08/26 1480 m × 30 m asphalt



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The airport Hof-Plauen is a Certified by air law airfield and five kilometers southwest of the city of Hof (Saale) (district Pirk ) in the northeast of Bavaria located. The operating company founded in 1998 calls it Hof-Plauen Airport and bears this in its own name. The term “airport” is common locally.

history

Flight operations on the Hohe Saas

In 1920, the newly founded association for new aeronautical designs with a local branch of the German Air Sports Association used an elevated area on the western outskirts of the city of Hof, the Hohe Saas , for its flying activities. After 1928, the expansion of the site into an airfield brought a line connection on the Fürth –Hof – Leipzig route for several years . The airfield was in operation until the end of the Second World War in 1945 and was used, among other things, by the Air Force for stopovers of the Junkers Ju 52 / 3m . On the High Saas is since 1945 a radar station of the US Army , which was acquired in 1990 by the German army.

post war period

The Aero-Club Hof , founded in 1950, found a suitable area in the village of Pirk, five kilometers southwest of Hof. After four years of planning, flight operations began in 1968 on an asphalt runway with a length of 720 meters. The further expansion of the airfield with a tower , operating buildings, hangars and extensions of the runway as well as the installation of instrument landing systems began.

Start of scheduled and charter flights from 1972

From 1972 daily scheduled flights to Frankfurt am Main were offered, initially with turboprop aircraft of the type DHC-6 Twin Otter from DLT and Bayerischer Flugdienst , from 1985 to 1992 mostly with the more modern Dornier Do 228 and then with larger De Havilland DHC-8 and ATR 42 . Hof-Plauen airfield has been involved in charter flights since the 1980s. The tour operators TUI , Neckermann and today's Thomas Cook Group listed Hof-Plauen as a departure airport all year round in their catalogs. In the best years there were up to ten rounds per week in the program. Destinations included Mallorca , Crete , Rhodes , Tunisia and mainland Spain . In addition to the scheduled flight to Frankfurt, there was also a connection to Munich for a short time .

The charter program offered with the BAe 146 for the holiday areas on the Mediterranean had to be discontinued in 2002, despite good bookings, because the existing runway in Hof with a length of 1,480 meters was too short for the machines mostly used in charter air traffic, such as the Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 .

The airfield was until 1998 a director operating under the direction of the construction office of the town of Hof. When it became foreseeable that the use of the BAe 146 machines , which with their four engines are suitable for short runways but were not competitive in charter operations, would be discontinued, there were considerations to reschedule this otherwise deficit operation and the necessary financial resources to get. The expansion for year-round charter operation to popular tourist destinations was sought. A GmbH was founded in which the city of Hof, the city of Plauen in the Vogtland, the district of Hof , the district of Wunsiedel in the Fichtelgebirge , the Vogtlandkreis and representatives of the regional economy have come together to achieve this goal.

In 2012 the scheduled service at the airport was discontinued. In May 2016 the city of Plauen decided not to subsidize the airfield any more in the future.

Expansion planning

Airfield in 2012

In order to enable an expansion of the range of flights for passengers and to promote the modernization and increase of the competitiveness of the airport, the runway should be expanded or rebuilt to 2480 meters. The plan approval procedure for this began in early 2006. The necessity of this planning is controversial.

Despite financial commitments from the state budget in Bavaria, critics see the expansion of the airfield as bad planning, since the airports in Nuremberg , Halle-Leipzig , Dresden , Erfurt and Karlsbad in the Czech Republic are only about 110 to 180 km from Hof ​​and the number of passengers is insufficient for a profitable operation. The operators of the airport company justify the need to expand the airport with an extrapolation that predicted 140,000 and up to 300,000 passengers in 2020 for the airport. It is based on the impressive passenger numbers of the charter programs in the economically good 1990s and adhered to the expansion plans for the runway.

After a conversation with the then Bavarian Minister Erwin Huber on February 28, 2007, the impression arose that the requirements of the Federal Aviation Office for an airfield expansion could be partially fulfilled. Hamburg International and Frosch-Touristik GmbH had shown interest in using the airfield for charter traffic after the expansion. As a result, a positive planning approval decision came closer.

On June 19, 2007, the North Bavarian Aviation Office, based in Nuremberg , rejected the expansion plan. The operating company of the airport accused the decision-makers of not making objective decisions about what the authorities and politicians deny. The investor group BCD Holdings , interested in the expansion of the airfield, bought a building site for the construction of an industrial park in the nearby town of in the Czech Republic.

A lawsuit by the operating company of the airfield against the North Bavaria Aviation Authority failed. Since then, the airfield has been modernized, the runway and the enlarged apron renovated, paved and a new hangar built in 2008/2009. Filling stations and operating areas for AvGas (aviation fuel) and JET-A1 (kerosene) were built. A parking lot with 196 parking spaces was created outside the airfield. The approach area in front of the terminal was redesigned and the tower modernized.

Airlines and Destinations

As of November 2011 there was only one regular scheduled connection at Hof-Plauen airfield. On behalf of and on behalf of Lufthansa Regional, Cirrus Airlines operated the route from Hof ​​to Frankfurt twice a day Monday to Friday with a Dornier 328-100 . The connection for Lufthansa Regional was already flown with Augsburg Airways (November 1998 to October 2008) and Contact Air (October 2008 to March 2010). In October 2010, Cirrus Airlines announced that it would discontinue the route after only one year on April 1, 2011 due to lack of profitability. On April 29, 2011, it was decided that the regional airline would remain in place until March 2013, but with only two instead of three daily connections to Frankfurt. The new and old operator was Cirrus Airlines, the only competitor for the route was OLT Express . In January 2012, when Cirrus Airlines ceased operations, the Hof – Frankfurt route was also discontinued. As announced in May 2012, it will no longer be put out to tender and subsidized.

Fair Air GmbH, based in Bayreuth and Hof , offers charter flights as air taxis from the Hof-Plauen airfield.

statistics

Hof-Plauen airport - traffic figures
Year of operation Passenger volume Flight movements Operating grants Subsidy line Hof – Plauen - Frankfurt
1997 58.032 12,658
1998 64,918 12,784
1999 64,462 13,200
2000 77,776 11,940
2001 51,921 10,780
2002 38,990 9,596
2003 36,315 8,374
2004 28,560 8,502
2005 26,645 7,356
2006 27,594 7,300
2007 29,640 8,050 € 1,521,500
2008 23,033 6,803 € 1,861,433
2009 20.006 6,390 € 1,737,625
2010 18,734 7,217 € 1,611,105 € 2,900,000
2011 13,017 8,520 € 1,385,200 € 3,500,000
2012 4,331 8,194 € 1,257,163 € 3,500,000
2013 3,968 8.212 € 968,796
2014 4.120 7,225 € 894,440

The passenger volume figures relate to scheduled and charter traffic.

In 2009 the regional airport was renovated for eight million euros. The Free State of Bavaria assumed 90% of the costs.

According to a press release from the Bavarian State Ministry on May 21, 2012, the number of passengers at Hof-Plauen airfield was only 7700 in 2011. The suspension of the only and subsidized scheduled flight connection is responsible for this development.

Further use

The air sports club Aero-Club Hof has its club home in the Aero-Center at Hof-Plauen airfield.

In June 2013, DTM test drives took place on the airfield for the first time .

Since September 1, 2015, the taxiway "B" and other airfield parts have been used for automobile tests and are only available to a limited extent for air traffic. BMW is also researching autonomous driving on the site.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Hof Airport: Scheduled traffic is suspended. Retrieved August 19, 2016 .
  2. Hof will have to finance its regional airport alone in future. Retrieved May 28, 2016 .
  3. Anneke Hudalla and planned on the border between the Czech Republic , Saxony and Bavaria to invest 700 million for this: Süddeutsche Zeitung of 16 November 2007; Page 23
  4. airliners.de: Cirrus Airlines connects Hof with Frankfurt January 19, 2010
  5. Route cancellations at Cirrus Airlines November 16, 2010
  6. aero.de - Subsidized line Hof-Plauen finally set May 21, 2012
  7. Hof-Plauen Airport: Airplane "Show" ( memento from January 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) April 15, 2008
  8. [1]
  9. [2]
  10. [3]  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / ws.landtag.sachsen.de  
  11. [4]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.bayern.de  
  12. The clubhouse of the Aero-Club Hof in the Aero-Center at the Hof-Plauen airfield. Aero-Club Hof, accessed on August 9, 2015 .
  13. of September 24, 2013: Hof-Plauen Airport: Green light for DTM test drives
  14. Double use from 01.09.2015. Retrieved May 12, 2016 .
  15. BMW Group buys in as a tenant. Archived from the original on October 23, 2015 ; accessed on May 12, 2016 .