Industry overview
The Air transport sector across Germany comprises approximately 565 enterprises employing about 63,718 people and generating €12.6 bn in net turnover in 2020. The average enterprise size is – employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a negative operating margin of -14.5% of revenue in 2020, the sector reports €-1.8 bn of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
Cost of revenue dominates the Air transport P&L at 84.4% of turnover, reflecting the high material and input content of activities in this sector. Personnel costs account for 29.6%, with energy purchases adding –. Procurement efficiency and contract management are therefore the two strongest profit levers for operators in this segment.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2008 to 2020 the operating margin moved from -21.1% to -14.5% (+6.6 percentage points), an encouraging upward trajectory. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.