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Source: Fotolia / Andrew Barker

The German aviation industry is of paramount economic importance. It provides, either directly or indirectly, jobs for more than 800,000 people in Germany and successfully connects our economy with all relevant supply and sales markets in the world. This creates and ensures further employment and added value in Germany - in fields other than air transport, too. For example, aircraft annually transport external trade goods worth more than 200 billion euros from and to Germany (2012, source: BDL).

But air transport does more than that. It also plays a vital role for the personal mobility of people and the tourism industry in Germany and in other countries- and largely benefits the economy in this field.

However, global air transport has been subject to a fundamental structural change for several decades. This was essentially caused by the development of new growth centres, especially in Asia, a phenomenon that is going hand in hand with the advancing globalisation.
Furthermore, global advances with regard to liberalisation and deregulation were made on the international air transport markets. In the intensified competition in global air transport, especially players from Asia and the Middle East are able to strengthen their competitive edge and win market shares.
In order to strengthen Germany’s competitiveness as an air transport hub, the coalition parties CDU, CSU and SPD agreed in their coalition agreement for the 18th parliamentary term to develop an air transport strategy in this term.

For this purpose, a stronger role of the Federal Government in the planning of a nation-wide airport network is to be worked out via a dialogue with the federal states and interested members of the public.

In Germany, the Federal Government and the federal states are responsible for the aviation administration. The active participation of the Ministry in European and international air transport bodies is a key element of the administrative work.