Where in the world have you flown?
How long have you been in the air?
Create your own FlightMemory and see!

Airport Frankfurt (Germany) - Rhein-Main

For other uses, see Frankfurt Airport (disambiguation).
Frankfurt Airport
Flughafen Frankfurt am Main


Logo of Frankfurt Airport
IATA: FRA ICAO: EDDF
Summary
Airport type Public
Operator Fraport
Serves Frankfurt am Main
Elevation AMSL 364 ft / 111 m
Coordinates 50°0160N 008°34142E / 50.03333, 8.60611
Website http://www.frankfurt-airport.com
Runways
Direction Length Surface
m ft
07L/25R 4,000 13,123 Asphalt
07R/25L 4,000 13,123 Concrete
26L12 2,500 8,202 Concrete
183 4,000 13,123 Concrete
Source: EUROCONTROL[1]
1 As per NOTAMs runway is unlit/unmarked until May 2008 and instrument approach suspended until December 2008[1]
2 Runway 26L is a displaced threshold of Runway 07R/25L.[2]
3 The opposite end of Runway 18, which if marked would be Runway 36, is unused.

Frankfurt am Main International Airport (IATA: FRA, ICAO: EDDF), known in German as Flughafen Frankfurt am Main or Rhein-Main-Flughafen, is located near Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 12 km (7 mi) southwest[1] of the city centre. Run by Fraport, it is by far the largest airport by passenger traffic in Germany, the third largest in Europe and the eighth largest worldwide. It serves as an important hub for international flights from around the world. It is also the busiest airport in Europe by cargo traffic. The southern side of the airport, Rhein-Main Air Base, was a major airlift base for the United States from 1947 until late 2005, when it was acquired by Fraport.

There are plans to expand Frankfurt Airport with a fourth runway and a new Terminal 3. Modifications to the airport to make it Airbus A380 compatible have already started, including the building of a large A380 maintenance facility near the former U.S. Air Base which is not yet completed. The work on the fourth runway has been delayed several times due to environmental concerns, but received zoning approval in December 2007. The runway could be in operation by 2010.

Frankfurt is a hub of Lufthansa, the German national carrier. Because Lufthansa operates over capacity in Frankfurt[verification needed], it divides traffic between Frankfurt and Germany's second largest airport, Franz Josef Strauß International Airport in Munich, where possible[improper synthesis?].

Contents

Importance

Frankfurt Airport is the third largest airport by passenger traffic in Europe after London Heathrow Airport and Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, as well as the eighth largest airport worldwide.

World's busiest airports by passenger traffic [3]
Rank City Airport Passengers (2007)
1. Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport 89,379,287
2. Chicago O'Hare International Airport 76,159,324
3. London Heathrow Airport 68,068,554
4. Tokyo Haneda Airport 66,671,435
5. Los Angeles Los Angeles International Airport 61,895,548
6. Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport 59,919,383
7. Dallas/Fort Worth Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport 59,784,876
8. Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt International Airport 54,161,856
9. Beijing Beijing Capital International Airport 53,736,923
10. Madrid Madrid Barajas International Airport 52,122,214

Frankfurt is also the busiest European airport by cargo traffic and ranks seventh largest worldwide.

World's busiest airports by cargo traffic [4]
Rank City Airport cargo in t (2007)
1. Memphis Memphis International Airport 3,840,574
2. Hong Kong Chek Lap Kok International Airport 3,772,673
3. Anchorage Ted Stevens International Airport 2,826,499
4. Incheon Incheon International Airport 2,555,582
5. Shanghai Shanghai Pudong International Airport 2,494,808
6. Narita/Tokyo Narita International Airport 2,252,654
7. Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt International Airport 2,169,025
8. Louisville Louisville International Airport 2,078,290
9. Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport 2,005,160
10. Miami Miami International Airport 1,922,982

In terms of plane movement, Frankfurt was second in Europe in 2006 with 489,406 landings and take offs, between Paris Charles de Gaulle (541,566) and London Heathrow (481,476).

Access

Public transport

There are two railway stations at Frankfurt Airport: one for regional trains and one for long distance trains.

The Airport Regional Railway Station at Terminal 1 provides access to the S-Bahn lines S8 and S9 which depart every 15 minutes during the day to Wiesbaden in the west via Rüsselsheim and Mainz and to Hanau in the east via Frankfurt Central Station, Frankfurt city centre and Offenbach am Main. The journey time to Frankfurt Central Station is 11 minutes, to the city centre (Hauptwache) 15 minutes. The first S-Bahn trains arrive at 4:28h from Frankfurt and Hanau, and at 4:29h from Mainz and Wiesbaden; the last ones depart at 1:32h to Frankfurt, at 0:29h to Wiesbaden and at 0:59h to Rüsselsheim. A ticket to Frankfurt costs 3.55, and must be purchased before going down to the platform, either at a vending machine or the Deutsche Bahn ticket counter.

Regional express trains to other destinations like Saarbrücken in the west, Koblenz down the Rhine valley to the north, or Würzburg in the east also call at the Regional Railway Station, as do some long distance trains, especially at night when the Long Distance Railway Station is closed.

The Airport Long Distance Railway Station was opened in 1999. It is the end point of the new-build Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line, which links southern Germany to the Ruhrgebiet via Cologne at speeds up to 300 km/h (190 mph). All ICE trains between Cologne and southern Germany stop at Frankfurt Airport, taking slightly less than an hour from Cologne. About 10 trains per hour depart in all directions.

The station is squeezed in between the A3 and the four-lane Bundesstraße B43, linked to Terminal 1 by a building that bridges the Autobahn. Arriving railway passengers can check in right at the train station for about 60 airlines.

The tracks are numbered from 1 to 3 in the regional station and from 4 to 7 in the long distance station.

Deutsche Bahn operates the AIRail Service in conjunction with Lufthansa, American Airlines and Emirates. The service operates to the central stations of Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Hamburg, Hannover, Mannheim, Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart and to Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe.

Various transport companies provide bus services to the airport.

Car and taxi

Frankfurt Airport is located in the Frankfurt City Forest and directly connected to a Autobahn intersection called Frankfurter Kreuz where the A3 and A5 meet. It takes a 10-15 minutes ride by car or taxi to get to Frankfurt Central Station or the city centre. A taxi ride cost approximately 25 or slightly more.

There are multi-level parking garages along the terminals, mostly underground, for passengers coming with their own car. A long term parking lot is located south of the runways, on the site of the former US military installation, with a shuttle bus to the terminals.

Ground transportation statistics

In 2006, 29.5% of the 12,299,192 passengers whose air travel originated in Frankfurt came by private car, 27.9% came by rail, 20.4% by taxi, 11.1% parked their car at the airport for the duration of their trip, 5.3% came by bus, and 4.6% arrived with a rental car.[5]

History

The Rhein-Main Airport and Airship Base opened in 1936 and was the second-largest airport in Germany (after Tempelhof Airport in Berlin) through World War II. After the war, it served as the main West German operations base for the United States Air Force's contribution to the Berlin Airlift.

The airport did not emerge as a major international hub until 1972, when its new passenger terminal (now Terminal 1) opened. Planning for a new runway (18 West) began in 1973. This project spawned massive protests by residents and environmentalists. While the protests and related lawsuits where unsuccessful in preventing the construction of the runway, the "Starbahn West" protests were one of the major crystallization points for the German environmentalist movement of the 1980s. The protests even continued after the runway had been opened in 1984.[6]

In September 2007, German authorities arrested three suspected Islamic terrorists for plotting a "massive" terror attack, which posed "an imminent threat" to Frankfurt Airport and the US Air Force base in Ramstein.[7]

Structure and function

Frankfurt Airport has two main passenger terminals, which are connected by corridors as well as by people movers and buses.

Terminal 1

Terminal 1 opened on 14 March 1972, called Terminal Mitte (Central Terminal) back then for being in the middle of the runways, and between the original terminal in the east and the cargo area in the west. It was designed in a modern style for the period, with polished silver interiors and corrugated walls.

The terminal is functionally divided in three levels, the departure level in the upper deck with the check-in counters and the arrival level with the baggage claim areas at ground level, and underneath a distribution level with access to the (regional) train station and the underground and multistorey parkings. Departure and arrivals levels have both separate street approaches. A bus station is located at arrivals level. Parallel to the terminal, on the other side of the street, are a hotel and an office building ("FAC" = Frankfurt Airport Center). The three level deep underground parkings are beneath those buildings. The tracks of the train station run between the terminal as such and the range of office and hotel buildings.

The land side of Terminal 1 is 420 meters long. Horizontally it is divided into three areas called A, B, and C.

It is divided into three concourses. Lufthansa and its Star Alliance partners currently dominate all of Terminal 1.

Concourse A

Concourse A has gates on two levels, with gates numbered A51 through A65 positioned directly above gates numbered A08 through A42.[8]

Concourse B

Concourse C

Terminal 2

Terminal 2 opened on the 24 October 1994. It is designed to resemble a classical railway station from its landside facade. It is divided into two concourses.

Concourse D

Concourse E

First Class Terminal

Lufthansa maintains a separate First Class Terminal at Frankfurt Airport for the use of first class passengers and members of the highest tier of its Miles & More rewards program (but not other Star Alliance programs). The terminal has 200 staff for around 300 passengers per day, and provides individualized security screening and customs facilities, valet parking, a white-linen restaurant, a cigar room and bubble baths. Passengers are driven from the terminal directly to their aircraft by a chaffeured Mercedes. The commercial success of the FCT at Frankfurt has led Lufthansa to plan the opening of a similar facility at Munich International Airport.[9]

Other features & amenities

Frankfurt has two cargo terminals, North and South, as well as a separate General Aviation Terminal on the south side of the airport. There is also a Sheraton hotel adjacent to Terminal 1. Terminal 1 also has a full-service German Post Office & DHL office open to the public.

Former Airlines and Destinations

Incidents

In 1969, Ariana Flight 701, a Boeing 727 of Ariana Afghan Airlines was arriving at London Gatwick Airport from Frankfurt when it crashed into a house, killing 50 of the 66 people aboard. Two people died on the ground.

On 22 May 1983 during an airshow at the Rhein-Main Air Base, a Canadian RCAF F-104 Starfighter crashed onto a nearby road, hitting a car and killing all passengers, a vicar's family of 5. The pilot was able to eject.

In 1988 the first leg of Pan Am Flight 103 (a Boeing 727) took off from Frankfurt. About half of the passengers and baggage changed planes at Heathrow Airport to continue to New York. A bomb exploded on the aircraft (Boeing 747) above the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all the passengers on board. The bomb is believed to have been planted by Libyan terrorists.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c German Aeronautical Information Publication from EUROCONTROL
  2. ^ Fraport Corporation - HALS/DTOP
  3. ^ Airport Council International: Total Passenger Traffic 2007
  4. ^ Airport Council International: Year to date Cargo Traffic 2007
  5. ^ Statistical data prepared by Fraport department MVG-MF based on polls conducted in the departure lounges every four days
  6. ^ hr-online: Startbahn West Chronik
  7. ^ 'Massive' Terror Plot Foiled In Germany (Sky News)
  8. ^ Terminal maps
  9. ^ "A Bubble Bath and a Glass Of Bubbly at the Airport," Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2007. [1]

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Flughafen Frankfurt am Main
This article based on this article: Frankfurt_International_Airportexternal Link from the free encyclopedia Wikipediaexternal Link and work with the GNU Free Documentation License. In Wikipedia is this list of the authorsexternal Link.