Photo: Hamburg Airport
While passenger numbers remained the same at Hamburg in 2025 as they were for 2024, the airport is expecting to see growth in traffic in the year ahead.
Around 14.8 million passengers travelled through Hamburg Airport in 2025, a similar figure to the number seen in 2024. Around 127,000 aircraft took-off and landed at the German hub while the average load factor on flights was over 80%. However, the airport has underlined that it has maintained its recovery rate at around 86% since pre-Covid (2019) figures, despite a challenging market environment.
The airport’s recovery rate is also the top among German airports with 10 to 25 million passengers excluding hub airports such as Munich and Frankfurt.
Hamburg’s steady passenger traffic despite challenging conditions
Describing 2025 as “not an easy year for aviation in Germany” Christian Kunsch, CEO at Hamburg Airport said the conditions for domestic air traffic were particularly challenging.
“All the more pleasing that, under these difficult conditions, we were able to maintain the strong result from the previous year and welcome around 14.8 million passengers at Hamburg Airport,” he said.
Berit Schmitz, Managing Director at Hamburg Airport added: “The majority of travellers to and from Hamburg fly for private reasons. Passengers between 25 and 34 years of age make up the largest age group. The share of business travellers recovered slightly for the first time last year, rising from 21 to 23% but remains well below 2019 levels.”
The airport’s busiest day of the year was 19 October, when around 59,000 passengers travelled through the airport. The occasion marked the beginning of the autumn school holidays.
Stable processes and a reduction in security headaches
Schmitz also pointed out that the high load factor on flights departing Hamburg in 2025 meant the airport handled more passengers and therefore more baggage. Stable processes have helped improve the reliability of departures and arrivals, including the reduction of waiting times at the security checkpoint and onboarding and offloading of passengers and baggage. Around 90% of passengers spend less than 10 minutes at security and 98% less than 20 minutes. On average the first bag is on the belt after 15.7 minutes, the last after 28.2 minutes. The airport introduced its free Bag & Go service in April 2025, enabling passengers to check directly after landing when their bags will be available on the carousel.
Throughout the course of the year around 55 airlines operated approximately 120 direct destinations from the airport, 20 of which were hub airports. This level of connectivity demonstrates how Hamburg is integrated into the national and international air traffic network and therefore how wide the choice of routes is for passengers.
Route development from Hamburg
With talks ongoing with carriers to confirm their flight schedules for the upcoming summer season, Kunsch explained “We expect to once again offer an attractive route network and a high quality of stay at the airport in the coming year. In terms of passenger development, we are forecasting a slight increase again in 2026.”
The first new destinations have already been confirmed. Royal Jordanian is a new addition connecting northern Germany with Amman in Jordan from the end of March. Meanwhile Ajet is offering direct flights to Bodrum in Turkey from 27 June and easyJet is flying from Hamburg to Marrakesh in Morocco from 1 May, while Condor will also begin serving flights to Kalamata in Greece from the same date. TAP Portugal is increasing its capacity to Lisbon. Norwegian is launching new direct links to Stockholm in Sweden from May in addition to increased services to Oslo. At the end of April SAS will also begin flying to Oslo and from the end of March, airBaltic will launch a twice-weekly connection from Hamburg to Tallinn.
