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Frankfurt International Airport , known in German as Rhein-Main-Flughafen, Flughafen Frankfurt am Main or Frankfurt Airport in Neudeutsch, is located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is the largest airport in Germany and the second or third-largest in Europe (depending on which data is used), serving as an important hub for international flights from around the world. It is run by Fraport AG. The southern side of the airport, until late 2005, was known as Rhein-Main Air Base, a major airlift base for the United States from 1947 onwards.

Frankfurt International is a hub of Lufthansa, the German flag carrier. Because of undercapacity in Frankfurt, Lufthansa divides traffic between Frankfurt and Munich's Franz Josef Strauß International Airport when possible.

Frankfurt International currently serves more destinations than London's Heathrow International Airport, but in terms of passenger traffic Frankfurt International is third in Europe, behind London's Heathrow Airport and Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport.

  • Passenger traffic at Frankfurt International Airport in 2005 was 52,219,412 *, compared with 67,915,389 at Heathrow Airport, and 53,756,200 at Charles de Gaulle Airport.
  • In terms of plane movement, Frankfurt was second in Europe with 490,147 planes *, between Charles de Gaulle Airport (522,619) and Heathrow (477,888).
  • In terms of cargo traffic, Frankfurt was first in Europe with 1,963,141 metric tonnes (2,163,992 US tons) *, just ahead of Charles de Gaulle Airport (1,770,940 metric tonnes) and Heathrow (1,389,591 metric tonnes).

Nevertheless, there are plans to expand Frankfurt Airport with a fourth runway and a new Terminal 3, and to modify the airport to be able to service the new Airbus A-380 plane, by building a large A380 maintenance facility near the former U.S. Air Base. After Dubai (with forty-three A380s), the airport will be the base for the second-largest A380-fleet in the world (up to fifteen A380s).

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 Berlin Airlift.

The airport did not emerge as a major international hub until 1972, when its new passenger terminal (now Terminal 1) opened.

Incidents on flights that departed from Frankfurt

In 1969, Ariana Flight 701, a Boeing 727 of Ariana Afghan Airlines was arriving to London Gatwick Airport from Frankfurt International 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 street, hitting a car and killing all passengers, a pastor's family of 5. The pilot was able to eject.

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 the U.S. A bomb exploded on the aircraft (Boeing 747) above the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all the passengers onboard. The bomb was planted by Libyan terrorists.

Structure and function

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

Terminal 1

Terminal 1 opened on March 14th, 1972. It was designed in a modern style for the period, with polished silver interiors and corrugated walls. It is divided into three concourses. Lufthansa and its Star Alliance partners currently dominate all of Terminal 1.

Concourse A
  • Adria Airways (Ljubljana,Vienna)
  • Air Baltic
  • Air Dolomiti (Bologna, Florence, Verona)
  • Air One
  • Austrian Airlines (Vienna)
  • Cimber Air
  • Cirrus Airlines (Billund, Skopje (Ends September 10, 2006))
  • Croatia Airlines (Dubrovnik, Split, Zagreb)
  • LOT Polish (Gdansk, Krakow, Poznan, Warsaw, Wroclaw)
  • Lufthansa (Abu Dhabi, Abuja, Accra, Addis Ababa, Alexandria, Algiers, Almaty, Amman, Amsterdam, Ashgabat, Asmara, Athens, Atlanta, Bahrain, Baku, Bangalore, Bangkok, Barcelona, Beijing, Beirut, Belgrade, Berlin-Tegel, Bilbao, Birmingham (UK), Bologna, Boston, Brussels, Bucharest, Budapest, Buenos Aires-Ezeiza, Cairo, Calgary, Cape Town, Caracas, Casablanca, Charlotte, Chicago-O'Hare, Copenhagen, Dallas/Fort Worth, Dammam, Delhi, Denver, Detroit, Doha, Dubai, Dublin, Dusseldorf, Edinburgh, Faro, Florence, Gothenburg-Landvetter, Guangzhou, Hamburg, Hanover, Helsinki, Hof-Plauen, Hong Kong, Houston-Intercontinental, Hyderabad, Istanbul, Jakarta, Jeddah, Johannesburg, Karachi, Katowice, Kazan, Khartoum, Kiev, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait, Lagos, Larnaca, Leipzig, Linz, Lisbon, London-City, London-Heathrow, Los Angeles, Madras, Madrid, Manila, Marseille, Mexico City, Miami, Milan-Linate, Milan-Malpensa, Minsk, Montréal, Moscow-Sheremetyevo, Muenster/Osnabrueck, Mumbai, Munich, Muscat, Nagoya, New York-JFK, Newark, Nice, Nizhniy Novgorod, Oslo, Osaka-Kansai, Paderborn, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Perm, Philadelphia, Portland, Porto, Poznan, Prague, Riga, Rimini, Riyadh, Rome-Fiumicino, Rostov, St. Petersburg (RU), Samara, San Francisco, Sanaa, São Paulo-Guarulhos, Seoul-Incheon, Shanghai-Pu Dong, Singapore, Split, Stockholm-Arlanda, Stuttgart, Tallinn, Tehran-Mehrabad, Tel Aviv, Tokyo-Narita, Toulouse, Toronto, Tripoli, Tselinograd, Tunis, Turin, Ufa, Valencia, Vancouver, Verona, Vienna, Vilnius, Warsaw, Washington-Dulles, Wroclaw, Zagreb, Zurich)
  • Luxair (Luxembourg)
  • Scandinavian Airlines System (Copenhagen, Gothenburg-Landvetter, Stockholm)
  • Spanair (Madrid)
  • Swiss International Air Lines (Zürich)

Concourse B

Concourse C

Terminal 2

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

Concourse D

Concourse E

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.

Ground transportation

Deutsche Bahn operates the AiRail Service in conjunction with Lufthansa, American Airlines and Emirates. There is a fast ICE service to Cologne with one or two stops only.

The service operates to Bonn Hbf, Cologne Hbf, Düsseldorf Hbf, Freiburg Hbf, Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe, Hamburg Hbf Rail Station, Hanover Hbf, Mannheim Hbf, Munich Hbf, Nuremberg Hbf, and Stuttgart Hbf. The long-distance railway station is adjacent to Terminal 1. For regional and some night services, a regional station is situated underground, providing a frequent S-Bahn link operated by S-Bahn Rhein-Main link to Frankfurt central station. Trains take 12 minutes to reach Frankfurt's city centre and depart roughly every 15 minutes on weekdays from the regional train station.

The airport is located adjacent to the A3 and A5 autobahns; taxis to the city center cost approximately 20 euro.

Various companies provide bus services to the airport.

See also:

External links

Airports in Germany | Frankfurt | Companies listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange

Flughafen Frankfurt am Main | Flughaveno Frankfurta | فرودگاه بین‌المللی فرانکفورت | Aéroport de Francfort | Frankfurtska zračna luka | Aeroporto di Francoforte sul Meno | Luchthaven Frankfurt am Main | フランクフルト国際空港 | Flughafen Frankfurt am Main | Flughafen Frankfurt am Main | Międzynarodowy port lotniczy Frankfurt | Aeroportul Internaţional Frankfurt | Международный аэропорт Франкфурт-на-Майне | Flughafen Frankfurt am Main | Flughafen Frankfurt am Main | 法兰克福国际机场

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Frankfurt International Airport".

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