Total Flights Are Up. The Experiment Still Worked.

German airports expect a record 2026. The industry association ADV forecasts passenger growth of 4.2 percent, more than 225 million passengers for the year. Summer departures are already up 1.6 percent on 2025 -- roughly 74,100 takeoffs from German airports in July alone, according to the DLR's tourism report, driven mainly by more holiday flights. Berlin Brandenburg expects 26.5 to 27 million passengers this year, continued growth. Nuremberg posted a record 2025.

In May, this publication reported that domestic flights had fallen fifty percent since 2019 -- to eight percent of all German passenger connections, down from 26.7 percent. A campaign group called the trend a voluntary success and announced a petition for a full statutory ban. A Green party spokesman called domestic flights "dispensable." Both were describing something real.

Both things are true at once because they were never describing the same number. Domestic point-to-point flying -- the segment easiest to substitute with rail, and the one this publication reported, two weeks earlier, had been made uneconomical by a kerosene price shock affecting twenty million passengers who had not been asked -- collapsed. Total German air travel, driven by international leisure routes, did not. It grew through 2025 and is accelerating in 2026.

We wrote at the time, forecasting from the same model that had already called the frontrunner of a government transition before nominations opened elsewhere this summer: "The Greens' documented position... the crisis proves the danger of fossil dependence. They will not be wrong. This will not help." The current numbers are consistent with that.

German civilian aviation produced approximately 16 million tonnes of CO2 a year, about 2 percent of the country's emissions, at the point we last cited the figure. Nothing in this year's passenger data suggests that number has fallen. A domestic route between Frankfurt and Berlin replaced by a train does not reduce the emissions of a family flying to Thessaloniki, and more families are doing that this year than last.

There is a domestic political echo to this too. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has repeatedly criticised Germany's sick-leave rate this year -- employees take, on official figures, between 14.5 and 14.8 days off sick annually, which he has called too high, and the coalition announced a reform in July tightening sick-note rules and moving to abolish telephone sick certification. OECD comparisons put Germany in the upper-middle of the European table, not first, which has not settled the argument. Whatever the merits of the criticism, the response visible in the ticket data is not more time at a German desk. It is more time in Mallorca, Antalya, or Thessaloniki. This publication draws that connection; nobody in the sick-leave debate has.

A correction is due on the forecast this publication opened with. The ADV's 4.2 percent, 225-million- passenger figure carried a condition this publication did not carry along with it: "sofern verkehrspolitische Weichenstellungen" -- provided certain policy steps are taken -- which the association has not confirmed have been. Since that forecast was issued, Lufthansa has grounded part of its fleet and plans to cut roughly 20,000 short-haul flights by October over kerosene cost, saving an estimated 40,000 tonnes of fuel; the airport association's own worst case is now a 10 percent capacity reduction at some airports this year, affecting up to 20 million passengers, with its best case being flat demand. The domestic- versus-total distinction above still holds on the numbers already realised in 2025. Whether total German air travel grows again in 2026, rather than merely shrinking more slowly than the domestic segment did, is less settled than this publication first reported.

The target -- eight percent domestic, described in May as reachable -- was reached. The number it was meant to stand in for was not moved. Both facts are now published. Only one of them was the point.