Sylt Airport
Sylt Airport |
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|---|---|
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| Characteristics | |
| ICAO code | EDXW |
| IATA code | GWT |
| Coordinates | |
| Height above MSL | 8 m (26 ft ) |
| Transport links | |
| Distance from the city center | 2 km east of Westerland |
| Street | Flughafenstrasse 1 |
| Basic data | |
| opening | 1918 |
| operator | Airport Sylt GmbH |
| surface | 240 ha |
| Terminals | 2 |
| Passengers | 140,000 (2019) |
| Flight movements |
7,892 (2016) |
| Employees | circa 65 |
| Runways | |
| 06/24 | 1696 m × 45 m concrete |
| 14/32 | 2120 m × 45 m concrete |
| website | |
| flughafen-sylt.de | |
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The Sylt Airport ( IATA : GWT , ICAO : EDXW ) is the commercial airport of the German North Sea island of Sylt . It is located two kilometers east of the center of the main town Westerland in the area of the municipality of Sylt , district Tinnum , at 8 meters above sea level. NN .
history
The airport was built immediately after the end of the First World War . The main driving force behind the development in the early years was tourism, which developed strongly in the early years of the Weimar Republic . Westerland in particular was one of the most popular seaside resorts in Germany at the time. The fact that access to the island by sea due to the reorganization of the German-Danish border in the course of the referendum in Schleswig made a double border change (Germany - Denmark - Germany) necessary from 1920 onwards was also beneficial . The ferry connection to Munkmarsch in Hoyerschleuse (which belonged to Denmark from 1920) had a natural location disadvantage compared to the flight. The train journey, which is common today, was only set up with the completion of Hindenburgdamm in 1927.
In July 1919 - as the second scheduled flight connection of the Deutsche Luftreederei - a scheduled flight connection was created on the Berlin - Hamburg - Sylt route . This makes Sylt Airport one of the airports with the longest tradition of scheduled flights in Germany. Although the airport was only served in the summer and the planes could only take three to five passengers at the time, Sylt airport already had 2,560 passengers in 1925.
At the end of the 1920s, the airport was initially enlarged to the northeast from 17 hectares to 37 hectares. In the second half of the 1930s, the airfield became one due to its strategic importance airbase expanded with three star-shaped runways, the total was now 85 ha.
During the Second World War , the island was expanded into a fortress and so, along with tourism, civilian flight operations came to a complete standstill. In April 1940, parts of several squadrons were lying here in preparation for the Weser Exercise Company .
The following table shows a list of selected active flying units (excluding school and supplementary units) of the Wehrmacht Air Force that were stationed here between 1939 and 1945.
| From | To | unit | equipment |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 1939 | April 1940 | Staff, II./KG 26 (Staff and II. Group of Kampfgeschwaders 26) | Heinkel He 111H |
| October 1939 | February 1940 | II./ZG 1 (II. Group of Destroyer Squadron 1) | Messerschmitt Bf 109E |
| March 1940 | March 1940 | I. (Jagd) / LG 2 (I. (Jagd-) Gruppe of Lehrgeschwader 2) | Messerschmitt Bf 109E |
| April 1940 | April 1940 | I./ZG 76 | Messerschmitt Bf 110 |
| April 1940 | April 1940 | Staff, I., II./KG 30 | Junkers Ju 88A |
| April 1940 | April 1940 | Parts of III./LG 1 ( III.Group of Lehrgeschwader 1) | Heinkel He 111H, Junkers Ju 88A |
| August 1940 | August 1940 | Parts of I./JG 77 (I. Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 77) | Messerschmitt Bf 109E |
| October 1940 | April 1941 | 2./JG 54 (2nd squadron of Jagdgeschwader 54) | Messerschmitt Bf 109E |
| May 1941 | May 1941 | 1./JG 52 | Messerschmitt Bf 109E |
| July 1941 | August 1941 | 6./JG 53 | Messerschmitt Bf 109F |
| January 1944 | November 1944 | IV./NJG 3 (IV. Group of Night Fighter Squadron 3) | Junkers Ju 88C-6 |
| September 1944 | December 1944 | III./NJG 3 | Junkers Ju 88G-1 |
| May 1945 | May 1945 | IV./JG 3 | Focke-Wulf Fw 190A |
In the years after the war, until 1961, the airport was used exclusively for military flight operations by the victorious powers , who initially referred to the place as Airfield B.170 . From mid-July 1945, the RAF Sylt initially served as the basis for weapons training courses for squadrons from other RAF stations for almost two and a half years . It was only when the air base was transferred to the Bundeswehr that parts of the airport were used again for civil purposes. From 1961 to 2005 the naval aviation training group was stationed on the military part of Sylt Airport , where the military and technical training of the teams and NCOs of the naval aviation squadron of the German Navy took place.
In addition to scheduled flights to and from Hamburg, Kiel and Flensburg , a Berlin-Sylt-Berlin airline developed in the 1960s, which was initially operated as a charter route by the Germania travel agency and later as a subsidized route by British Airways . The residents of what was then West Berlin used the flight connection very actively, as it enabled them to avoid the arduous journey through the territory of the GDR. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the so-called “midday machine” , which arrived on Sylt every day at around 1 p.m. and took off for the return flight to Berlin about an hour later, was a fixture in air traffic over the island.
Package flights and scheduled flight destinations to all regions of Germany followed. During this time, various types of commercial aircraft could be observed on Sylt. In 1971 the German Armed Forces left the actual flight operations area together with some buildings to the Sylter Flughafen GmbH & Co., which had now been founded. In 1990, a new handling building with an integrated control tower, a new instrument approach system with appropriate approach lighting and an urgently needed improvement in capacity and quality were added to a new location a rescue and vehicle hall was built. The air traffic control facilities were later supplemented by a radar system and the latest flight data processing.
Since 1998 the new operator of the airport, through a company restructuring, has been SFG Sylter Flughafen GmbH & Co. Betriebs- und Service-KG .
End of military use
On December 1, 2005, the use of the military part of the airport by the Naval Aviation Training Group ended. Since the last members of the descendants left in March 2006, the entire airport has been used exclusively for civilian purposes. Since autumn 2011, the barracks, workshops and hangars on the formerly military northern part of the area have been gradually torn down. This work has only been partially completed to date - there have been and are lively discussions on the island about the preservation of some key buildings such as the (now demolished) English cinema or Hall 28, which is used by the island's rescue services.
Air Berlin flew daily from Sylt to Düsseldorf all year round until its bankruptcy in 2017 . Outside the main holiday season (October to April) only one connection was flown from Düsseldorf. In addition, seasonal routes to Munich , Stuttgart , Nuremberg and Zurich were served.
Current expansion status
There are two separate check-in buildings (Terminal 1 and Terminal 2) on the airport premises. While Terminal 1 handles almost all scheduled connections, Terminal 2 is mainly used for regional air traffic - e.g. B. to the neighboring islands, as well as for charter flights and for all flights of the local airline Sylt Air - as well as for general aviation .
Since the last expansion of the departure area of Terminal 1 by an additional waiting area with a total of three gates, up to three machines with a total of up to 500 passengers can now be handled almost simultaneously. Two luggage belts are available in the arrivals area.
Destinations and passenger numbers
From Sylt there are scheduled flights to some airports in Germany and Zurich Airport . Short and medium-haul aircraft are used here. There are significantly more flight connections in the summer season than in the rest of the year.
The airport experienced a significant upturn from 2005 onwards. Due to the sharp increase in the number of domestic German connections and the use of larger aircraft, the number rose from 48,000 passengers in 2004 to 217,000 passengers in 2011. In 2014, the number of passengers was similar to that in Previous year, at 175,000; this meant that this northernmost airport in Germany was the most frequented airport in Schleswig-Holstein after Lübeck-Blankensee airport . In the meantime, scheduled flight operations in Lübeck have ceased.
In 2019, a significant increase was recorded again, 140,000 passengers use the fast route to the North Sea island, in the previous year there were just 125,000, i.e. an increase of almost 8%.
After the last expansion stage of the check-in and reception building at Terminal 1 with now three gates and two baggage carousels, the maximum number of passengers is around 250,000 passengers per year, whereby it should be noted that the vast majority of passengers are handled on the summer weekends, where there may already be capacity bottlenecks. In the winter half of the year, however, and on many weekdays, the airport is underutilized.
Incidents and Security
- On May 30, 2008, a German private aircraft of the Beechcraft Bonanza type coming from the Netherlands with three people on board crashed on the approach to the airport about three kilometers from the runway on a meadow directly adjacent to a residential area. The pilot was killed and two passengers injured. Uninvolved people were not harmed.
- The Cockpit Association listed Sylt Airport in its 2009 airport deficiency list . In it she primarily criticized the lack of important technical equipment features at this airfield. In the report for 2010, the airport was expressly praised (free of defects) because Runway Guard Lights and the ATIS were now in operation.
Gliding
The traditional Aeroclub Sylt uses an area east of the actual airport area for gliding. Glider flights on the edge of the dunes of Wenningstedt had already started in the 1920s , at that time still under the umbrella of the German Aviation School . In 1961 the association moved to the airport grounds. The club currently has around 20 active members and also offers guest flights.
| Aircraft type | Registration |
|---|---|
| Schleicher ASK13 | D-3670 |
| Grob Twin Astir 1 | D-3953 |
| K 8 b | D-0560 |
| LS 4b | D-4432 |
| SF25C | D-KHGA |
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Air traffic at major airports. Destatis.de , February 28, 2017, accessed January 10, 2018 .
- ↑ Henry L. deZeng IV: Air Force Airfields 1935-1945 Germany (1937 Borders) , pp 693-695 , accessed on August 29, 2014
- ↑ Significant plus in passenger numbers at Sylt Airport. Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 29, 2019, accessed on January 5, 2020 .
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento from January 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 20265. Aviation Safety Network Database, July 13, 2010, accessed August 1, 2010 .
- ^ Airport defect list 2010. (No longer available online.) Vereinigung Cockpit eV, archived from the original on June 29, 2009 ; Retrieved on August 1, 2010 : “We don't want to save with praise either. Some airports have gone to great lengths to quickly remedy the deficiencies we have discovered. The airport Sylt / Westerland should be mentioned here as an example, which was awarded a star rating last year, but is star-free this year due to its efforts. " Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
