Business Flights: Short and Sweet

It’s the year 2026 at Baden Air­park in south­ern Ger­many. Busi­ness trav­el­ers are espe­cial­ly pleased with this region­al air­port and the short dis­tances to their flights. They leave their cars at charg­ing sta­tions right out­side the ter­mi­nal. A few min­utes later—thanks to com­plete­ly dig­i­tal­ized check-in processes—they are seat­ed on a Dornier 328 pow­ered by hydro­gen fuel-cell tech­nol­o­gy. The elec­tric air­lin­er car­ries 40 pas­sen­gers and has a range of 2,500 kilo­me­ters. Small­er elec­tri­fied short-haul planes with 10, 20, or 30 seats and ranges of up to 1,500 kilo­me­ters con­nect Baden Air­park with other Ger­man and Euro­pean region­al air­ports. A vision has become real­i­ty: with small envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly planes, region­al air­ports are suc­cess­ful­ly serv­ing the niche mar­ket for busi­ness trips.

Short-haul flights have been round­ly crit­i­cized for some time now in light of efforts to reach cli­mate tar­gets. But the busi­ness world con­tin­ues to depend on quick con­nec­tions. Region­al air­ports, which stim­u­late their local com­mu­ni­ties but in most cases have yet to oper­ate eco­nom­i­cal­ly and are there­fore regard­ed with skep­ti­cism, could play a key role here. “With inno­v­a­tive busi­ness strate­gies, short-haul flights can con­tin­ue to offer rapid con­nec­tions,” says avi­a­tion expert Marc Land­graf from Porsche Consulting.

Around two dozen of Ger­many’s approx­i­mate­ly 40 region­al air­ports are poten­tial hubs for new approach­es to busi­ness trav­el. Exam­ples include Ros­tock-Laage, Magde­burg-Cochst­edt, Pader­born-Lipp­stadt, Bre­men, Dort­mund, Mem­min­gen, and Karl­sruhe/Baden-Baden. Easy access, quick check-in, and con­ve­nient size are three big advan­tages of these small facil­i­ties. How­ev­er, region­al air­ports have yet to achieve com­mer­cial suc­cess. As Land­graf explains, “Their capac­i­ties are often under­uti­lized, and the high check-in and oper­at­ing costs for small air­craft make it hard to achieve rea­son­able returns.” New busi­ness mod­els are need­ed. And they’re already here: region­al air­ports can focus on busi­ness trav­el­ers who can and want to avoid the big trans­port hubs. And if the right air­craft can make fly­ing sus­tain­able, short flights can be the key to eco­nom­ic suc­cess. Mod­ern elec­tric motors and increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful bat­ter­ies are mak­ing this pos­si­ble. Accord­ing to Thorsten Ertel, an expert on Porsche Con­sult­ing’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty team, “Region­al air­ports can ide­al­ly serve many busi­ness trav­el­ers while also reduc­ing emissions.”

No new air­ports have to be built for short-haul flights because enough already exist. With build­ings and infra­struc­ture already in place, there’s no need to pave over more soil. This is just one com­po­nent of more sus­tain­able aviation—which offers many addi­tion­al ben­e­fits. Ertel lists some of them: “Busi­ness trav­el­ers save time, air­ports bring in more rev­enue, local com­mu­ni­ties enjoy high­er tax pro­ceeds, CO₂ emis­sions are low­ered.” Speak­ing of green­house gases, in 2019—the year before the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic broke out—Germany emit­ted more than 800 mil­lion tons. Short-haul flights of up to 1,500 kilo­me­ters account­ed for 25 per­cent of Europe’s total avi­a­tion emis­sions. Politi­cians are call­ing for a change in course. “Hybrid-elec­tric flights need to be the new stan­dard in Ger­many by 2035,” says Thomas Jar­zombek, the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s coor­di­na­tor of avi­a­tion and aero­space pol­i­cy. But that’s not all. Noise lev­els, par­tic­u­lar­ly at take­off and land­ing, need to be low­ered. But this too is pos­si­ble. Elec­tri­fied pro­pel­lor air­craft are around 75 per­cent qui­eter than their elder “sib­lings” with tur­bine-pow­ered engines.

Wal­ter Schoe­fer, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and Man­age­ment Spokesman for Flughafen Stuttgart GmbH and an advi­so­ry board mem­ber for Baden-Air­park GmbH, is con­vinced that region­al air­ports are well-posi­tioned to make the need­ed tran­si­tion to greater sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Regard­ing his region­al air­port sit­u­at­ed between the Rhine River and the A5 free­way, he notes that “we have the space here to try out new approach­es such as solar power sys­tems and elec­tric charg­ing sta­tions.” The lat­ter have been almost entire­ly absent from avi­a­tion facil­i­ties through­out Ger­many. Nor have uni­form stan­dards for the asso­ci­at­ed charg­ing infra­struc­ture been insti­tut­ed. There are also chal­lenges regard­ing the main­te­nance of elec­tric air­craft. A com­pre­hen­sive net­work of main­te­nance sta­tions is need­ed, along with spe­cial­ly trained per­son­nel. Set­ting this up will take time and money. But the good news here is that main­te­nance for elec­tric air­craft is com­pa­ra­ble to that for elec­tric cars—it’s sim­ple and economical.

The Ger­man Avi­a­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (BDL) views the role of elec­tric air­craft pri­mar­i­ly in terms of shut­tle ser­vices to major air­ports. Region­al air­ports would then serve to chan­nel trav­el­ers to the big hubs. Elec­tric VTOL aircraft—also known as air taxis—could offer an alter­na­tive here. The prob­lem is that Europe has yet to stan­dard­ize an autho­riza­tion process for air taxis. The region­al air­ports would also have to be bet­ter net­worked with other means of trans­porta­tion. Ger­many’s only small air­port with its own train sta­tion right now is Bodensee-Friedrichshafen.

Schoe­fer empha­sizes that region­al air­ports can only be com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful if they offer all forms of air trav­el: busi­ness, vaca­tion, and indi­vid­ual flights. “The trans­for­ma­tion to cli­mate-friend­ly air trav­el will require con­sid­er­able mod­i­fi­ca­tions on our part,” he notes. The changes will have to be intro­duced in par­al­lel to nor­mal operations—which hope­ful­ly will run smooth­ly dur­ing the tran­si­tion. At the same time, he points to the enor­mous invest­ments that region­al air­ports will have to make. “It won’t be pos­si­ble with­out part­ners,” he pre­dicts. Air­lines and ener­gy com­pa­nies could con­tribute, because air­ports in cities like Söllin­gen, Biele­feld, Lübeck, and other non-cen­tral regions rep­re­sent poten­tial­ly lucra­tive sources of business.