Dortmund Airport

Dortmund Airport Flughafen Dortmund
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IATA: DTM – ICAO: EDLW DTM Location of airport in North Rhine-Westphalia
Summary
Airport type	Public
Operator	Flughafen Dortmund GmbH
Serves	Dortmund and the eastern Rhine-Ruhr area, Germany
Elevation AMSL	425 ft / 130 m
Coordinates
Website	dortmund-airport.de
Runways
Direction Length Surface m ft 06/24 2,000 6,560 Asphalt
Source: German AIP at EUROCONTROL

Dortmund Airport (IATA: DTM, ICAO: EDLW), is a minor international airport located 10 km (6.2 mi) east of Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia. It serves the eastern Rhine-Ruhr area, the largest urban agglomeration in Germany, and is mainly used for low-cost and leisure charter flights. Dortmund Airport served approximately 1.9 million passengers in 2013, the nearest major international airport is Düsseldorf Airport approx. 70 km (43 mi) to the southwest.

History

Early years

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.

Little service

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

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

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 A320 family series aircraft to warm-weather destinations and business centres.

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. However easyJet cancelled four of five destinations in 2012.

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.

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 the motorway connections and directly connecting the airport to mass transit.

In October 2014, Air Berlin announced to leave Dortmund Airport entirely, cancelling their last remaining summer seasonal route to Palma de Mallorca. The airline already shut down several leisure routes to and from here in 2012.

Airlines and destinations

The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights at Dortmund Airport:

Airlines	Destinations
airBaltic	Seasonal: Heringsdorf
Air VIA	Seasonal charter: Burgas
easyJet	London-Luton
Freebird Airlines	Seasonal charter: Antalya
Germania	Seasonal: Fuerteventura (ends 4 May 2016), Zonguldak (begins 28 June 2016)
Germanwings	Munich, Palma de Mallorca Seasonal: Ankara, Split
Ryanair	Kraków, London-Stansted, Palma de Mallorca, Porto Seasonal: Málaga
SunExpress	Seasonal: Antalya, Izmir
SunExpress Deutschland	Istanbul-Sabiha Gökçen
Tailwind Airlines	Seasonal charter: Antalya
Wizz Air	Belgrade, Bucharest, Budapest, Cluj-Napoca, Gdańsk, Katowice, Kiev-Zhulyany, Riga, Sibiu, Skopje, Sofia, Târgu Mureș, Timișoara, Tuzla, Vilnius, Warsaw-Chopin, Wrocław

Statistics

Overview of the departures level

Apron view

	Passengers	Movements	Freight (in t)
2001	1,064,149	37,393	257
2002	994,478	33,812	289
2003	1,023,329	29,788	96
2004	1,179,028	25,743	75
2005	1,742,911	30,672	58
2006	2,019,651	32,785	37
2007	2,155,057	32,223	40
2008	2,329,440	29,555	35
2009	1,711,157	24,043	21
2010	1,747,731	24,232	33
2011	1,814,246	26,391	26
2012	1,896,885	22,634	4
2013	1,924,386	23,809	2
2014	1,964,625	22,202	0
2015	1,985,370
Source: ADV German Airports Association

Ground transportation

To Dortmund and the Ruhr area

Dortmund Airport is served by an express bus to Dortmund main station, a shuttle bus to the nearby railway station Holzwickede/Dortmund Flughafen, a bus to the city's metro line U47, as well as a bus to the city of Unna.

To Düsseldorf

Travellers with destination Düsseldorf main station need to catch the AirportShuttle bus to nearby Holzwickede station. The shuttle bus leaves every 20 minutes in front of the terminal building. From Holzwickede station catch the RE 13 (Maas-Wupper-Express) towards Venlo. The train runs every hour and provides a direct connection to Düsseldorf, the travel time is approx. 60 minutes.

Other facilities

At one time Eurowings had its headquarters, the Dortmund Administrative Center (Verwaltungsstandort Dortmund), at the airport. It has been relocated to Düsseldorf in 2010.

Accidents and incidents

• On 3 January 2010, Air Berlin Flight 2450, operated by a Boeing 737-800 (D-ABKF) overran the end of the runway after an aborted take-off at high speed due to an airspeed discrepancy on the two pilots' instruments. There were no injuries among the 171 people on board.

See also

• Transport in Germany
• List of airports in Germany

External links

Media related to at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• Current weather for EDLW at NOAA/NWS
• Accident history for DTM at Aviation Safety Network