Hamburg, Hannover and Bremen: three airports for one flat corner of Germany

Hamburg is the largest and the only one with meaningful long-haul and a dense short-haul network. It is the default for the whole of Schleswig-Holstein, the Elbe, the Baltic coast and the port. Hannover is the transport centre of the region rather than the largest city, and it is where the exhibition traffic lands. Bremen is small, extremely close to its own centre, and functionally the airport for the Weser, Bremerhaven and the East Frisian coast.

The distances between them matter because they are short enough to make the choice real. From Hamburg Airport it is 134 km to Bremen and 191 to Hanover. From Hannover Airport it is 147 to Hamburg and 122 to Bremen. From Bremen it is 122 to Hamburg and 137 to Hanover. A cheaper flight into the "wrong" one of the three is often still the right booking, and it is worth pricing the ground leg before dismissing it.

What makes that calculation different from the same exercise in, say, the Rhine-Ruhr is that the north is empty. Between these three cities the population thins out fast, and the rail network thins with it. Two places 120 km apart in North Rhine-Westphalia are half an hour apart on a train every ten minutes; two places 120 km apart in Lower Saxony can be two changes and a bus.

Cruise. This is the north's signature transfer and it is the one with a hard deadline attached. Hamburg has terminals at Steinwerder and Altona; Bremerhaven has the Columbus Cruise Center, which is one of the busiest cruise ports in Europe and is 70 km from Bremen Airport rather than in Bremen at all. A sailing does not wait, and neither does a ship's check-in window. Bremen Airport to the Columbus Cruise Center is a route we publish for exactly that reason, as is Hamburg Airport to Steinwerder and the longer run from Bremen to the Hamburg terminals.

Cruise luggage makes the case on its own. A fortnight's cases for two, formal wear included, is not an S-Bahn journey, and the walk from a station to a berth is longer than it looks on a map of a working port.

Trade fairs. Deutsche Messe Hannover is the largest exhibition ground in the world by floor area, and during a major fair the S-Bahn carries a load it is not sized for. It is also worth knowing that the exhibition entrances are not the station: the site is big enough that arriving at the right gate matters. Messe Bremen is 118 km from Hannover Airport and is a routine booking during its own events.

Wolfsburg and the industrial belt. Volkswagen's home city is 94 km from Hannover Airport and 246 from Hamburg, and the traffic is a mixture of business visitors and families going to the Autostadt. Salzgitter, Hildesheim and Braunschweig sit in the same belt — Braunschweig is 72 km from Hannover and Hildesheim 52.

The coast and the islands. Oldenburg, Wilhelmshaven, Cuxhaven and the East Frisian ferry ports are the classic case of a short map distance and a long journey. Bremen to Oldenburg is 50 km; Bremen to Bremerhaven is 70. Both are straightforward by road and neither is quick by rail with holiday luggage.

Lübeck, Kiel and the Baltic. Hamburg Airport to Lübeck is 79 km and to Kiel 89 — the two obvious runs out of Hamburg, and neither has a direct service from the airport. Add the Baltic ferry ports and this is most of what a car does at HAM.

We are not going to pretend otherwise on any of the three. Bremen is the strongest public transport case in Germany: tram 6 stops outside the terminal door, runs every six to ten minutes and reaches the centre in about eleven minutes. For a single traveller, and honestly for two, a car adds very little.

Hamburg has the S1 from under the terminals, reaching the Hauptbahnhof in about twenty-five minutes and running frequently. Hannover has an S-Bahn from beneath its terminals covering the eleven kilometres to the Hauptbahnhof in about twenty minutes. On an ordinary day, going into either city centre, take them.

Where that advice runs out at Hamburg is south of the Elbe, where the river crossings are the bottleneck and a short map distance becomes a long trip, and in the port and industrial districts, which the network barely serves. At Hannover it runs out during a major Messe and it never applied to the region at all. At Bremen it runs out at the city limits — the port, the Airbus sites, and everything toward the coast.

The other case at Hamburg is the evening. The airport has a night flight curfew, which compresses the arrivals into a bank before it — everybody reaches the platform at the same moment, and the last few departures land into a thinning timetable.

If you are going to Hamburg itself, the Elbe, Schleswig-Holstein, the Baltic coast or a cruise from the Hamburg terminals, fly to Hamburg. It has the network and everything else is a detour.

If you are going to a trade fair, to Wolfsburg, to Braunschweig, Hildesheim, Salzgitter or the Harz, fly to Hannover. It is the geographic centre of the region and the road distances from it are the shortest of the three to almost everywhere inland.

If you are going to Bremen, Bremerhaven, Oldenburg, the Weser or the East Frisian coast, fly to Bremen. It is small, it is quick to get out of, and it is 70 km closer to the Columbus Cruise Center than anywhere else you could land.

And if the flight you want goes to the wrong one, price the ground leg rather than assuming. The three are close enough that a 120 km transfer can be cheaper than the fare difference — which is a calculation worth doing explicitly, because at these distances intuition is usually wrong in both directions.