Air Taxi Express drops Helgoland link weeks after launching

Air Taxi Express has stopped flying to Helgoland after only a few weeks. The young Cologne airline announced the end of the route on 29 September on its social media channels, citing "regulatory reasons" without giving further detail at the time. It had announced at the start of September that it would fly from Nordholz airfield near Cuxhaven to the island.

The flights were to be operated with a Tecnam P92 Echo MkII, a light aircraft seating one pilot and one passenger. Air Taxi Express had said it planned to move to a larger aircraft on the route in 2027. How many passenger flights actually took place in September is not known.

The obstacle was a 46-year-old rule requiring twin-engine aircraft for flights to Helgoland. Germany's only offshore island lies roughly 50 kilometres out in the German Bight. It has about 1,300 residents and receives close to 300,000 visitors a year, a figure that is declining: in 2025 visitor numbers fell four per cent to 290,000, against more than 355,000 before the pandemic.

Tourism director Katharina Schlicht attributed the drop mainly to access. She told the portal Tageskarte that an unusually high number of ferries were cancelled last year because of bad weather. Since April 2025 there have also been no scheduled flights to Helgoland-Düne airfield. OFD Ostfriesischer Flug-Dienst, which had operated the link until then, ran into fleet problems and gave up. The airfield on Helgoland-Düne has three short runways.