Munich Airport

Location
First used in 1992, the airport is about 30 km or 24 miles north east of Munich city centre. Motorists can reach the airport terminal via the A92/E53 motorway leaving at the exit "Flughafen München-Franz Josef Strauß" or on the national carriageway B11.

The S-Bahn lines S2 and S8 operate regularly between the main station and the airport, the journey takes about 40 minutes. MVV buses also stop at the airport, as do buses operated by other transport companies in the vicinity.

History
The history of the airport of the regional Bavarian capital began in 1912, when an airfield was founded in Oberschleißheim for the royal Bavarian flight patrol. This is still used by the air sports association, as well as by the air patrol of the federal police force and is the oldest airport in Germany still in use. In 1939, the airport was replaced by Riem airport (which had been under construction since 1936) in order to better be able to deal with the high numbers of passengers that could not be handled by the old airport in Oberschleißheim. For a few years, the airport was one of the most modern airports in the world. The passenger numbers in Riem increased steadily in the following years and in 1962 over 1 million passengers could be checked in annually in Munich. Due to the for that time extremely high passenger numbers, the Munich city administration in 1963 began to think about and look for a site for a new airport via the Öchsle Commission, as it was foreseeable that the airport in Riem could not deal with the high passenger numbers with its limited capacities, and that a second runway was not conceivable due to the resident population. The commission finally found a suitable area three years later on the former marshland of Erdinger Moos between the districts of Freising and Erding, and another in the Hofoldinger Forest, south of Munich and in the community of Brunnthal. As the latter consisted to a large extent of pine forest and was a very popular recreational area for the population of the city of Munich, the idea was dropped and the commission decided to build the airport in Erding and to resettle the community of 400 inhabitants. The construction of the airport began in the winter of 1980, but had to be interrupted for four years after only 5 months of building work because the Bavarian superior administrative court allowed the objection that the planned area of the airport was too large. Building work was finally begun again in 1984 and the airport’s inauguration could be celebrated in 1989. After the 78 m tower was erected in 1991 and the airport in Riem almost burst at the seams with a total of 12 million annual passengers, the complete move from the airport at Riem to the new airport was begun on 17th May 1992, after lengthy logistic planning. The airport was extremely successful right from the start due to being Lufthansa’s second hub. 11 years later, in the summer of 2003, a new terminal was opened. Now, the two terminals at Franz-Josef Strauss airport deal with more than 30 passengers a year.