August 2008 in sports

Dortmund Airport
File:Dortmund Airport Logo.png
IATA: DTM ICAO: EDLW
Summary
Airport type	Public
Operator	Flughafen Dortmund GmbH
Location	Dortmund, Germany
Elevation AMSL	424 ft / 129 m
Coordinates	51°31′05.93″N 07°36′44.07″E
Runways
Direction Length Surface ft m 06/24 6,560 2,000 Asphalt

Dortmund Airport (IATA: DTM, ICAO: EDLW), is the international airport of Dortmund, Germany. Its slogan is Näher als man denkt (Closer than you think). Since 2006 it has been carrying the name "Dortmund Airport 21", in reference to the fact that Dortmund's utility company, DSW21, is its major shareholder.

Early history

The airport, originally located in the suburb of Brackel, was first served by commercial flights in 1925 by Aero Lloyd, which operated flights to Paris. By the business year 1927/1928, service had expanded to 2,589 commercial flights annually. During World War II the airport was used as a German air base, and was subsequently used by the British Royal Air Force. Service to Dortmund was not recommenced when German commercial air service was restarted in 1955. In 1960, the civil airfield was relocated to Dortmund-Wickede. The old airport was abandoned and occupied by British forces until the 1990s. Since 2006, part of the original airport area has been used as training grounds by the soccer club Borussia Dortmund.

Little service

Over the next decades Düsseldorf International Airport and Cologne Bonn Airport were the dominant commercial airports in the Rhine-Ruhr Area. Additionally Hanover/Langenhagen International Airport and Münster/Osnabrück Airport also covered some of the air travel needs of this region. Furthermore, the 257km (160mile) Sauerlandlinie opened in the late 1960s, connecting Dortmund with Frankfurt International Airport in under two hours by car.

Commercial service was restored in 1979 with daily flights to Munich by Reise- und Industrieflug GmbH (RFG). Nuremberg and Stuttgart followed shortly afterwards. Following German Reunification in 1990, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, and London were added to the flight schedule.

RFG and NFD (Nürnberger Flugdienst) merged in 1990 and Eurowings was formed, which is still based in Dortmund. Construction was started in 1998, and completed in 2000 on a new replacement terminal. This multi-level terminal prepared the airport for its resurgence.

Resurgence

The inside of the terminal (departure level)

From late 2000 onwards, Dortmund Airport has experienced a drastic increase in air traffic. In the 1990s weekly service had been generally restricted to a few turboprop flights to destinations within Germany, as well as occasional charter flights to warm-weather destinations. Since 2000, several new airlines have commenced service to Dortmund, many with mainline jets. Most of the air traffic today is by low cost airlines operating Boeing 737 or Airbus A318/19/20/21 series aircraft to warm-weather destinations and business centers.

The first mass carrier at Dortmund Airport was Air Berlin, which began flights to London, Milan, and Vienna in 2002, supplementing its leisure routes to the Mediterranean. EasyJet made Dortmund a hub in 2004, and Germanwings followed in 2007. Air Berlin eventually ceased most non-leisure routes from Dortmund in 2005, but easyJet and Germanwings have taken over in this role.

Ground transportation

Dortmund Airport is served by an express bus to Dortmund Main Station, a shuttle bus to a nearby rail station (Holzwickede/Dortmund Flughafen), and a bus to Unna, a city to the east.

Future

The airport's master plan consists of the following elements:

• Increasing normal operating hours by one hour at night (to 23:00h), with an additional one hour window in the morning and at night for exceptions.
• Lengthening the runway to 2800 metres
• Expanding the terminal and its infrastructure
• Improving motorway connections
• Directly connecting the airport to mass transit

In June 2008 easyJet announced that it will be ceasing all operations from the airport, as low passenger figures and the closure of the airport's runway at 23:00h was not viable for the company anymore. It will cease all operations in October of this year.

Airlines and destinations

• Air Alps (Bolzano) seasonal
• airberlin (Antalya, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Palma de Mallorca, Tenerife-South)
  • airberlin operated by Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter (Westerland/Sylt)
• Air Via (Bourgas, Varna) seasonal
• Belle Air (Pristina [starts October 27]
• Blue Wings (Ankara, Antalya)
• Bulgarian Air Charter (Bourgas, Varna) seasonal
• easyJet (Alicante, Barcelona, Budapest, Edinburgh, Krakow, London-Luton, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, Prague, Rome-Ciampino, Thessalonki) [ends October 2008]
• Germanwings (Ankara, Bastia, Faro, Ibiza, Istanbul-Sabiha Gökçen, Munich, Palma de Mallorca, Split, Vienna, Zadar, Zagreb)
• Sky Airlines (Antalya)
• SunExpress (Antalya)
• Wizz Air (Bucharest-Băneasa, Cluj Napoca, Gdansk, Katowice, Kiev-Boryspil [starts January 4], L'viv [starts January 4], Poznan, Sofia, Timişoara [starts December 17], Warsaw, Wroclaw)

References

• "History". Company Information. Retrieved 2008-04-06.

External links

• Dortmund Airport