Hamburg Airport chief Christian Kunsch has voiced frustration that Luxembourg will receive a long-haul Airbus A321XLR service while Hamburg still has no similar transatlantic route. In an interview with aeroTELEGRAPH, he linked the gap to weak route economics, even as he argued that demand for a nonstop connection from northern Germany remains in place.
Kunsch reacted to United Airlines’ new Europe network, which includes Luxembourg on the A321XLR, and questioned why the smaller market appears to be ahead of Hamburg. He pointed out that Hamburg’s earlier US services were typically filled by about 70% local passengers and 30% travellers from elsewhere, below the roughly 80% US-origin demand airlines want on such routes.
Hamburg, he said, still generates enough long-haul demand, but it is currently channelled through hub airports rather than nonstop. The airport is also competing with other secondary European cities, including Nice and Ljubljana, as carriers decide where to deploy the A321XLR. Kunsch has led Hamburg Airport since 2019 and has chaired its management board since January 2024.