Project Westphalia Airport

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The Westphalia Airport , also called 3rd Intercontinental Airport or 3rd Commercial Airport NW in official documents , was a planned international major airport between the cities of Sendenhorst and Drensteinfurt in the North Rhine-Westphalian district of Warendorf .

planning

The North Rhine-Westphalian state government under Prime Minister Heinz Kühn ( SPD ) decided on March 13, 1970 that there should be another international airport in North Rhine-Westphalia in addition to the existing airports in Düsseldorf and Cologne / Bonn . In a traffic report published in May 1970, Economics and Transport Minister Fritz Kaßmann (SPD) spoke out in favor of the construction of a major airport between the locations of Rinkerode , Albersloh , Everswinkel , in view of the increasing number of passengers and the limited capacities of the existing airports in North Rhine-Westphalia ,Hoetmar , Sendenhorst and Drensteinfurt. At that time, Drensteinfurt was also proposed as the German location for the construction of the CERN research facility , which also justified the construction of an international airport in this region by Transport Minister Kaßmann.

The airport was scheduled to open in 1980. The construction costs were estimated by the NRW state government at a total of 1.1 billion DM . The construction of the airport was also planned as a significant investment in the structurally weak region of the Münsterland . The airport was intended to act as a catalyst for the region's economic development and attract businesses.

Dimensions

For the construction of the airport, a land requirement of 2000 hectares was estimated in the state government's traffic report from 1970. With a planned 30 million passengers per year, Westphalia Airport would have become the third largest airport in Germany . A total of five runways were to be built, two of which were 4000 meters long and two were 2500 meters long. There should also be a 2500 meter long cross wind run. In the final expansion stage, the airport should have handled a maximum of 40 million passengers, two million tons of freight and 500,000 flight movements per year.

criticism

Immediately after the publication of the plans of the NRW state government for the construction of Westphalia Airport, protests formed among the local population. Residents and farmers feared enormous noise pollution from the airport and a loss in value of the adjacent properties. The state government emphasized that it wanted to create replacement areas for the owners of the areas required for the construction of the airport. Farmers joined together in several interest groups in order to be able to take joint action against the construction of the airport.

Failure of the project

A central argument against the construction of the Westphalia airport was the low flight corridor of the British armed forces . Great Britain still had occupation rights in North Rhine-Westphalia under the allied right of reservation and should have rescheduled its military maneuvers in Münsterland due to the construction of the airport. The North Rhine-Westphalian state government included the low flight corridors in its planning, but did not see this as an obstacle to the construction of the airport.

After the federal government under Chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD) opposed the project, the end of the project was announced in the state parliament in Düsseldorf in January 1973 . The then incumbent Minister of Economic Affairs Horst-Ludwig Riemer ( FDP ) resigned.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sendenhorst Heimatverein - Airport in the early 1970s. Retrieved May 24, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Traffic report of the NRW state government for the 3rd intercontinental airport. Retrieved May 24, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Airport project: plans for the drawer. In: Dülmener Zeitung. Retrieved May 24, 2020 .
  4. ↑ The dream of Westfalen Airport is shattered. Retrieved May 24, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Traffic report of the NRW state government for the 3rd intercontinental airport. Retrieved May 24, 2020 .
  6. ^ Christian Hölscher: The third intercontinental airport in North Rhine-Westphalia. Retrieved on May 24, 2020 (German).
  7. ↑ Traffic report of the NRW state government for the 3rd intercontinental airport. Retrieved May 24, 2020 .
  8. ↑ a b Sendenhorst Heimatverein - airport in the early 1970s. Retrieved May 24, 2020 .