Hahn is the lossmaking base... (It) was profitable initially, but the huge increase in capacity over a relatively short period of time has made it unprofitable.
It seems a bit weird to me. Indeed, the LF's weren't satisfactory over the last period, but the situation has also been similar in many other places recently. And to my knowledge, HHN costs are far from too expensive...
But if true, the explanation might be found in the catchment area. Although the former military base Hahn uses "Frankfurt" in its name, it is actually located very far from the town. Obviously, some passengers come from Frankfurt and more or less distant places like Cologne, Bonn or Saarbrücken, to mention just a few, but this stream of people has its limitations. Most of the passengers heading to Frankfurt city will continue to use EDDF, Rhein-Main-Airport. The best catchment area for HHN is rather Koblenz, Trier, Luxemburg and the beautiful district of Rhein-Hunsrück, that is not so much. Here, again, looks like the saturation is approaching, too fast apparently.
One might say: if EDDF can serve over fifty million passengers, there is still so much to allure towards HHN, a low-cost counterpart nearby. Not necessarily, though. EDDF has developed so well not because it's so adjacent to Frankfurt, above all it's a hub where the majority of people changes from one flight to another, not just a base like HHN.
All these things are truisms, aren't they? As these are more than obvious for most of you, why am I wasting your time? Unfortunately the issue so obvious in relation to the legacy airlines still looks so strange in the low-cost context. Why?
Surely, the majority of low-cost routes do not need connecting flights. Between the major destinations there is no need to alter a typical lo-co "point-to-point" model. Indeed, there is not much sense in connecting, say, the STN - MAD route with anyting else. London is big enough to be bound with any medium-size airport in Spain, no need to bother with connecting flights. That's why the airlines preferrig major airports (like EZY) will always be more immune to the fluctuation in demand, a simple frequency reduction will do the trick. But if you prefer smaller airports further away from a core of the business, like Ryanair does, these issues look different. Throughout the winter season FR did have problems with LF on some HHN routes. Like, say, to NYO, TRF or PIK in the North or AHO, MJV, MRS, SDR, even GRO to the South (and more). Some of them were cancelled, some are still fighting for survival. So, in order to expand at most of the typical FR bases the strategy should change. I dare to say, if these dots in the network were bound and thus sold to more customers, some of the routes might have survived...
HHN has an ideal location in the centre of Europe, just as FRA has. Hence, maybe just this airport should be selected as the low-cost transfer point between the less-frequent, smaller destinations, serving diversified purposes and in that regard differing from every other base in the Ryanair's network? If the progress has to be made, it looks like the most natural solution, even if it was in conflict with the most strict interpretation of the low cost travel theory...